I picked up a new piece of invective from Mark Steyn.
I believe he intends 'wankerati' to be coextensive with 'left-wing commentariat.' Read his The Turning Point and see if you don't agree. The brilliant polemicist offers up other choice phrases such as "malign carbuncles on the body politic." That's a reference to Di Fi (Dianne Feinstein), et al. And there's "a chamber full of posturing tosspots."
'Tosspot' is a general term of abuse that conjures up drunkard and sot. It puts me in mind of pot-valiant. One is correctly so described if one's courage derives from the consumption of spirits.
There is a use for abuse. It is a mistake to think that verbal abuse ought never to be employed.
Hands are best employed in caressing and blessing. But sometimes they need to be balled into fists and rudely applied to the faces of miscreants.
If one resorts to verbal abuse and invective one does not always thereby betray a paucity of careful thought informed by fact. Verbal abuse has a legitimate use in application to the self-enstupidated, the willfully ignorant, and those out for power alone regardless of truth and morality.
It is not reasonable to think that all are amenable to the dulcet tones of sweet reason; some need to be countered with the hard fist of unreason.
On the other side of the question, one should never resort to invective if one is trying to persuade a reasonable person. One should proceed as calmly as possible. Any resort to billingsgate will cause the interlocutor to assume that one lacks good reasons.
……………….
If you studied the above properly you will probably have learned three or four new words.
If you have a large vocabulary you will love my blog; if you don't, you need it.
When some activist or advocate makes a claim, be skeptical and run the numbers, especially when the advocate has a vested interest in promoting his cause.
Do you remember Mitch Snyder the advocate for the homeless who hanged himself in 1990? I heard him make a wild claim sometime in the '80s to the effect that the number of homeless in the U. S. was three million. At the time the population of the U.S. was around 220 million. So I rounded that up to 300 million and divided by three million. And then I knew that Snyder's claim was bogus, and probably fabricated by Snyder, as was later shown to be the case. It is simply not credible that one in 100 in the U. S. is a homeless person.
When Snyder admitted to Ted Koppel that he made up his number, advocates for the homeless defended his tactic as "lying for justice." See here. A nice illustration of the leftist principle that the end justifies the means. Obama implemented the principle when he lied some 30 times about the Affordable Care Act . But let's not go over that again.
Philosophy needs no social justification. But one of the salutary social byproducts of its study and practice is the honing of one's critical thinking skills. I am assuming that the philosophy in question is broadly analytic and not the crapulous crapola of such later Continentals as Derrida.
The GAO [General Accounting Office] found that black students get suspended at nearly three times the rate of white students nationally, a finding consistent with previous analyses. The Obama Education and Justice Departments viewed that disproportion as proof of teacher and principal bias. Administration officials used litigation and the threatened loss of federal funding to force schools to reduce suspensions and expulsions radically in order to eliminate racial disparities in discipline.
The argument is essentially this:
1) Black students get suspended at a higher rate than white students.
Therefore
2) Teachers and principals are biased against black students.
Clearly, this is a howling non sequitur. (Non sequitur is Latin for it does not follow.) To make the above into a valid argument one would have to add something like the following premise:
0) Black and white students are behaviorally equal: equally well-behaved or equally ill-behaved.
In the presence of (0), the conclusion follows.
But (0) is manifestly false. For support of this claim, see Mac Donald's article:
According to federal data, black male teenagers between the ages of 14 and 17 commit homicide at nearly 10 times the rate of white male teenagers of the same age (the category “white” in this homicide data includes most Hispanics; if Hispanics were removed from the white category, the homicide disparity between blacks and whites would be much higher). That higher black homicide rate indicates a failure of socialization; teen murderers of any race lack impulse control and anger-management skills. Lesser types of juvenile crime also show large racial disparities. It is fanciful to think that the lack of socialization that produces such elevated rates of criminal violence would not also affect classroom behavior. While the number of black teens committing murder is relatively small compared with their numbers at large, a very high percentage of black children—71 percent—come from the stressed-out, single-parent homes that result in elevated rates of crime.
The same pattern of invalid argumentation is found across the Left. Leftists regularly assume that different groups are empirically equal. They then incorrectly take the fact that there is no equality of outcome as proof that something nefarious was at work whether racism or sexism or ageism.
But what explains the eagerness of leftists to adopt such an obviously false assumption?
The question of how many school shootings have occurred in a given place over a given period of time is an empirical question. But to answer the empirical question, one must first have answered a logically prior question, which is non-empirical. This is the conceptual question as to the definition of 'school shooting.'
What counts as a school shooting? The supervised, safe, Saturday morning on-campus firing of BB guns at targets? The 'discharge' of a pea shooter? The shotgunning of ducks in a pond on a school's grounds? The killing of a stray deer with bow and arrow?
Suppose some punk fires a .223 round at a window of a school in the middle of the night when no one is there from an off-campus position. That could be called a school shooting too. A physical part of the school was shot at.
Or let us say that a distraught person commits suicide by shooting himself while seated in a car parked in a lot of what was formerly a school. This is an a actual case that was cited as a 'school shooting'! See linked article infra. Does this count as a school shooting? Not to someone who is intellectually honest.
Clearly, what most people mean by a school shooting is an attempted mass shooting in a school or on the premises of a school by one or more assailants armed with deadly weapons, a shooting of students or teachers or administrative personnel that causes death or injury.
That definition no doubt needs tweaking, but if we adopt something like it, then, since January 1st we have in these United States more like three, count 'em, three school shootings. Three too many, but even a liberal gun-grabber knows that 3 < 18.
Across the board, lying leftists bandy about terms without explicit definitions, or with over-broad definitions. They do this willfully to further their destructive agendas. If you are a decent human being you will do your bit to oppose them.
There are many arenas in which all ideas are not considered equal.
This example is from a recent piece in Vox. I could give further recent examples, but one is enough. To simplify, consider just the core thought:
All ideas are not considered equal.
Unfortunately it is not entirely clear what the core thought is. For the sentence is ambiguous as between
1) No ideas are considered equal
and
2) Some ideas are not considered equal.
The thoughts (propositions) expressed are distinct since the first can be false while the second is true. Although it is fairly clear that the author intended (2), a good writer avoids ambiguous constructions unless for some reason he intends them. So don't write sentences of the form
3) All Fs are not Gs
if you intend say something of the form
4) Some Fs are not Gs.
Write instead sentences of the form
5) Not all Fs are Gs
which, by simple quantifier negation, is equivalent to (4).
A curious new abortion argument by Princeton's Elizabeth Harman is making the rounds. (A tip of the hat to Malcolm Pollack for bringing it to my attention.) It is not clear just what Harman's argument is, but it looks to be something along the following lines:
1) "Among early fetuses there are two very different kinds of beings . . . ."
2) One kind of early fetus has "moral status."
3) The other kind of early fetus does not have "moral status."
4) The fetuses possessing moral status have it in virtue of their futures, in virtue of the fact that they are the beginning stages of future persons.
5) The fetuses lacking moral status lack it in virtue of their not having futures, in virtue of their not being the beginning stages of future persons.
Therefore
6) If a fetus is prevented from having a future, either by miscarriage or abortion, then the fetus does not have moral status at the time of its miscarriage or abortion. "That's something that doesn't have a future as a person and it doesn't have moral status." (From 5)
7) If a fetus lacks moral status, then aborting it is not morally impermissible.
Therefore
8) " . . . there is nothing morally bad about early abortion."
Some will say that this argument is so bad that it is 'beneath refutation.' When a philosopher uses this phrase what he means is that an argument so tagged is so obviously defective as not to be worth refuting. There is also the concomitant suggestion that one who refutes that which is 'beneath refutation' is a foolish fellow, and perhaps even a (slightly) morally dubious character when the subject matter is moral inasmuch as he undermines the healthy conviction that certain ideas are so morally abhorrent that they shouldn't be discussed publicly at all lest the naive and uncritical be led astray.
But to quote my sparring partner London Ed, in a moment when the muse had him in her grip: "In philosophy there is a ‘quodlibet’ principle that you are absolutely free to discuss anything you like." That's right. The Quodlibet Principle is one of the defining rules of the philosophical 'game.' There is nothing, nothing at all, that may not be hauled before the bench of reason, there to be rudely interrogated. (And that, paradoxically, includes the Quodlibet Principle!)
I hereby invoke that noble and indeed Socratic principle in justification of my attention to Harman's argument.
What's wrong with it? She is maintaining in effect that the moral status of a biological individual depends on how long it lasts. Accordingly, moral status is not intrinsic to the early fetus but depends on some contingent future development that may or may not occur. So the early fetus that developed into Elizabeth Harman has moral status at every time in its development, because it developed into what we all recognize as a person and rights-possessor, while an aborted early fetus has moral status at no time in its development because it will not develop into a person and rights-possessor.
This issues in the absurd consequence that one can morally justify an abortion just by having one. For if you kill your fetus (or have your fetus killed), then you guarantee that it has no future. If it has no future, then it has no moral status. And if it has no moral status, then killing it is not morally impermissible, and is therefore morally justified.
Is it ever morally right and reasonable to question or impugn motives or character in a debate?
I have just demolished Harman's argument. She has given no good reasons for her thesis. Quite the contrary. She has presented perhaps the most lame abortion argument ever made public. But what really interests me is the bolded question. And I mean it in general. It is not about Harman except per accidens.
Is it ever morally right and reasonable in a debate to question motives and character? I didn't get a straight answer from London Ed in an earlier discussion. So I press him again.
We agree, of course, that arguments stand and fall on their own merits in sublime independence of their producers and consumers. I have hammered on this theme dozens of times in these pages. One may not substitute motive imputation and character analysis for argument evaluation.
But once I have refuted an argument or series of arguments, am I not perfectly morally justified in calling into the question the motives and character of the producers of those arguments? I say yes.
I have a theory about what really drives the innumerable bad pro-abortion/pro-choice arguments abroad in this decadent culture, but I leave that theory for later. Here I pose the bolded question quite generally and apart from the abortion question.
. . . my main concern is how rational argument is deflected by questions of motive. Douglas Murray makes the point very well. Consider the proposition ‘Sharia law discriminates against women’. A rational response to this claim would be to investigate the nature of Sharia law, then to settle on a definition of ‘discriminate’, and then finally decide whether Sharia law does or does not fit that definition. This process is aimed at establishing the truth or falsity of the proposition in question. That by definition is rational debate.
Well of course. Who could disagree? The problem, however, is that rational debate does not resolve the main issues that divide us. Argument, even when conducted civilly and in accordance with all the proper canons, is of very limited value. Or can you think of a hot-button issue that has been resolved by rational debate?
But there is another form of response which sidesteps this completely, by questioning the motive of the person making the claim. Since it involves criticism of Sharia and hence of Muslims, the reason for making it must be racism or Islamophobia or whatnot. Note this does not involve any question of truth or falsity. Perhaps the opponent believes it too. No matter. The mere fact of making it [criticism of Sharia] means you are an Islamophobe, and must be shouted down, banned from the country, not allowed a platform etc.
Ed and I of course agree that it is in general wrong in a debate to divert attention from the content of a claim to the motives of the one making it. The content of a claim is either true or false, either supported or unsupported by evidence, etc. These properties of the propositional content of the claim are logically independent of anyone's psychology, in particular, the one who makes the claim. For example, here we read that in the U. S. most people with sickle cell disease are of African ancestry. Clearly, the truth value of that proposition is logically independent of whether or not the person making the claim loves blacks, hates them, wants them all sent back to Africa, etc. And of course there is nothing 'racist' about pointing out a racial fact like this.
But what I have just said in agreement with Ed is little more than the sort of philosophical boilerplate acceptable to all of us 'competent practioners.' But it doesn't get us very far.
Here is a much more interesting question:
Is it ever right to question or impugn motives in a debate?
I say it is sometimes right and sometimes rational. There are those here in the United States who oppose a photo ID requirement at polling places. They claim it 'disenfrachises' certain classes of voters, that it amounts to 'voter suppression.' But of course it does no such thing, and there is not one good argument against photo ID requirements.
The willful and widespread misuse of 'disenfranchise' is by itself a clear indication that the motives of those who misuse the word are unsavory.
I won't go through these anti-photo ID arguments one more time. But if they are all bad, as I argue that they are, then I have every right to 'psychologize' my ideological enemy and impugn his motives. And that is exactly what I do. More than once I have claimed that leftists oppose photo ID requirements because they want to make the polling places safe for voter fraud. Plain and simple, their motive is to encourage voter fraud. They are out to win any way they can, and in their minds the glorious end justifies the dishonest means. Radicals needn't be inconvenienced by the demands of bourgeois morality. They've read their Alinsky.
I could cite many more examples but one suffices to nail down the general point, which is: it is sometimes right and rational to question motives and indeed, to impute evil motives in explanation of the transparently flimsy arguments our enemies sometimes give, arguments which are mere smokescreens that make a mockery of rational discussion.
So it appears that Ed and I disagree. Surprise! His claim, if I understand it, is that it is never morally right and rational to question motives in a debate. My claim is that it sometimes is.
UPDATE 8/6: Malcolm Pollack responds,
Just read your post on motives. You wrapped it up with:
His claim, if I understand it, is that it is never morally right and rational to question motives in a debate. My claim is that it sometimes is.
It seems to me that the thing hinges on that phrase "in a debate". What's a "debate"? In principle it is a joint, rational inquiry, the purpose of which is to arrive at the truth. In that situation, then I'd agree with Ed.
But what we find ourselves dealing with in the social, political, and academic arena these days is rarely "debate", even though it pretends to be ("we need to have a national conversation about [insert left-wing hobby-horse here]"); it's a zero-sum war of conquest. (This is why accusations of inconsistency or hypocrisy, such as pointing out the Left's own widespread racism, so completely miss the point; their consistent principle is always simply that the other side is the enemy, and will be attacked.)
So when we aren't actually having a "debate" at all, then of course I'd agree with you. The key, then, is to be able to tell the difference.
……………..
Thanks, Malcolm. And in that situation I would agree with Ed too. But if we use 'debate' for what actually passes for debate, then I agree with me — and you.
I sense that your parenthetical remark is directed against me, given certain things I have said in the past, which is fine: you and I share enough common ground to make rational discussion possible and perhaps even fruitful. But your remark may need some refinement. Suppose we distinguish two classes of leftist opponents.
Class 1. These are the ones you are referring to. They operate from the commie/Alinksyite playbook. They have one guiding principle which they apply consistently: do whatever it takes to win; the other side is the enemy; attack them and give no quarter. Thus they will invoke our principles and values against us when it is convenient and conducive to their ends, even though they have no respect for these 'bourgeois' principles and values. For example, they will invoke free speech rights to get themselves heard, but shout down their opponents.
A naive guy like me comes along, who hasn't fully fathomed the depravity of the leftist mind, and protests their hypocrisy, their deployment of a double standard, the inconsistency of their application of the principle of free speech. And then you point out to me that I am "completely missing the point." My mistake, I suppose, is to assume that leftists share our values, including aversion to hypocrisy and inconsistency in application of standards.
Have I understood your point, Malcolm?
But it may be a bit more complicated since not all leftists are of the same stripe. There are also those who belong to:
Class 2. These are the ones that really are hypocrites and deployers of double standards. They are the ones that fall into inconsistency in the application of a principle such as that of free speech even while accepting the principle. So I can't have "completely missed the point" if there really are people in Class 2 and I point out their hypocrisy and deployment of double standards.
In sum, your parenthetical remark needs the nuancing that I have just provided.
Let me know if you would like me to open the Combox to allow a reply.
One of the purposes of this website is to combat the stupidity of Political Correctness, a stupidity that in many contemporary liberals, i.e., leftists, is willful and therefore morally censurable. The euphemism 'undocumented worker' is a good example of a PC expression. It does not require great logical acumen to see that 'undocumented worker' and 'illegal alien' are not coextensive expressions. The extension of a term is the class of things to which the term applies. In the diagram below, let A be the class of illegal aliens, B the class of undocumented workers, and A^B the intersection of these two classes. All three regions in the diagram are non-empty, which shows that A and B are not coextensive, and so are not the same class. Since A and B are not the same class, 'undocumented worker' and 'illegal alien' do not have the same intension or meaning. If two terms differ in extension, then they differ in meaning. (The converse does not hold.) Differing in both extension and intension (sense, meaning), 'undocumented workers' and 'illegal aliens' expressions are not intersubstitutable.
To see why, note first that there are illegal aliens who are not workers since they are either petty criminals, or members of organized criminal gangs e.g., MS-13, some of whose illegal alien members are terrorists, or too young to work, or unable to work. Note second that there are illegal aliens who have documents all right — forged documents. Note third that there are undocumented workers who are not aliens: there are American citizens who work but without the legally requisite licenses and permits.
So the correct term is 'illegal alien.' It is descriptive and accurate and there is no reason why it should not be used.
Now will this little logical exercise convince a leftist to use language responsibly and stop obfuscating the issue? Of course not. Leftism in some of its forms is willfully embraced reality denial, and in other of its forms is a cognitive aberration, something like a mental illness, in need of therapy rather than refutation. The latter are sick and one cannot refute the sick. They need treatment and quarantine and those who go near them should employ appropriate prophylactics.
So why did I bother writing the above? Because there are people who have not yet succumbed to the PC malady and might benefit from a bit of logical prophylaxis. One can hope.
Hope for the best. But prepare for the worst.
The winds of change that have blown the Orange Man into the White House have brought us to the shores of hope, hope for a return to sanity and order and the rule of law.
The Trump phenomenon provides excellent fodder for the study of political reasoning. Herewith, some thoughts on the cogency of the 'Hillary is Worse' defense for voting for Trump. I'll start with some assumptions.
A1. We are conservatives.
A2. It is Trump versus Hillary in the general: Sanders will not get the Democrat Party nod, nor will there be a conservative third-party candidate. (To be be blunt, Bill Kristol's ruminations on the latter possibility strike me as delusional.)
A3. Donald Trump is a deeply-flawed candidate who in more normal circumstances could not be considered fit for the presidency.
A4. Hillary Clinton is at least as deeply-flawed, character-wise, as Trump but also a disaster policy-wise: she will continue and augment the destructive leftist tendencies of Barack Hussein Obama. Hillary, then, is worse than Trump. For while Trump is in some ways not conservative, it is likely he will actually get some conservative things done, unlike the typical Republican who will talk endlessly about illegal immigration, etc., but never actually accomplish anything conservative.
With ordinary Republicans it is always only talk, followed by concession after concession. They lack courage, they love their power and perquisites, and they do not understand that we are in the age of post-consensus politics, an age in which politics is more like war than like gentlemanly debate on the common ground of shared principles.
My Challenge to the NeverTrump Crowd
To quote from an earlier entry:
In this age of post-consensus politics we need fighters not gentlemen. We need people who will use the Left's Alinskyite tactics against them. Civility is for the civil, not for destructive leftists who will employ any means to their end of a "fundamental transformation of America." For 'fundamental transformation' read: destruction.
It's a war, and no war is civil, especially not a civil war. To prosecute a war you need warriors. Trump is all we have. Time to face reality, you so-called conservatives. Time to man up, come clean, and get behind the 'presumptive nominee.'
Don't write another article telling us what a sorry specimen he is. We already know that. We are a nation in decline and our choices are lousy ones. Hillary is worse, far worse.
Consider just three issues: The Supreme Court, gun rights, and the southern border. We know where Hillary stands. We also know where Trump stands. Suppose he accomplishes only one thing: he nominates conservatives for SCOTUS. (You are aware, of course, that he has gone to the trouble of compiling a list of conservative candidates. That is a good indication that he is serious.) The appointment of even one conservative would retroactively justify your support for him over the destructive and crooked Hillary.
[. . .]
The alternative [to voting for Trump] is to aid and abet Hillary.
The False Priests are the columnists, media pundits, public intellectuals, and politicians who have presented themselves as principled conservatives or libertarians but now have announced they will vote for a man who, by multiple measures, represents the opposite of the beliefs they have been espousing throughout their careers. We’ve already heard you say “Hillary is even worse.” Tell us, please, without using the words “Hillary Clinton” even once, your assessment of Donald Trump, using as a template your published or broadcast positions about right policy and requisite character for a president of the United States. Put yourself on the record: Are you voting for a man whom your principles require you to despise, or have you modified your principles? In what ways were you wrong before? We require explanation beyond “Hillary is even worse.”
Now one thing that is unclear is whether Murray would accept (A4), in particular, the bit about Hillary being worse. He doesn't clearly state that they are equally bad. He says, "I am saying that Clinton may be unfit to be president, but she’s unfit within normal parameters. Donald Trump is unfit outside normal parameters." Unfortunately, it is not clear what this comes to; Murray promises a book on the topic.
Well, if you think Trump and Hillary are equally bad, then you reject (A4) and we have a different discussion. So let me now evaluate the above Murray quotation on the assumption that (A4) is true.
The Underlying Issue: Principles Versus Pragmatism
It is good to be principled, but not good to be doctrinaire. At what point do the principled become doctrinaire? It's not clear! Some say that principles are like farts: one holds on to them as long as possible, but 'in the end' one lets them go. The kernel of truth in this crude saying is that in the collision of principles with the data of experience sometimes principles need to be modified or set aside for a time. One must consider changing circumstances and the particularities of the precise situation one is in. In fact, attention to empirical details and conceptually recalcitrant facts is a deeply conservative attitude.
For example, would I support Trump if he were running against Joe Lieberman? No, I would support Lieberman. There are any number of moderate or 'conservative' Democrats that I would support over Trump. But the vile and destructive Hillary is the candidate to beat! And only Trump can do the dirty job. This is the exact situation we are in. If you are a doctrinaire conservative, say a neocon like Bill Kristol, then, holding fast to all of your principles — and being held fast by them in turn — you will deduce therefrom the refusal to support either Trump or Hillary. Like Kristol you may sally forth on a quixotic quest for a third conservative candidate. Just as one can be muscle-bound to the detriment of flexible and free movement, one can be principle-bound to the detriment of dealing correctly and flexibly with reality as it presents itself here and now in all its recalcitrant and gnarly details.
Conclusion: The 'Hillary is Worse' Defense is Cogent
Part of being a conservative is being skeptical about high-flying principles. Our system is the best the world has seen and it works for us. It has made us the greatest nation on the face of the earth — which is why almost everyone wants to come here, and why we need walls to keep them out while commie shit holes like East Germany needed walls to keep them in. (The intelligent, industrious Germans were kept in poverty and misery by a political system when their countrymen to the west prospered and enjoyed the fabled Wirtschaftswunder. Think about that!) But from the fact that our system works for us, it does not follow that it will work for backward Muslims riven by ancient tribal hatreds and infected with a violent, inferior religion. The neocon principle of nation-building collides with gnarly reality and needs adjustment.
Murray's point seems to be that no principled conservative could possibly vote for Trump, and this regardless of how bad Hillary is. His reasoning is based on a false assumption, namely, that blind adherence to principles is to be preferred to the truly conservative attitude of adjusting principles to reality. Murray's view is a foolish one: he is prepared to see the country further led down the path to "fundamental transformation," i.e., destruction, as long as his precious principles remain unsullied.
Our behavior ought to be guided by principles; but that is not to say that it ought to be dictated by them.
Rather than say that principles are like farts as my old colleague Xavier Monasterio used to say, I will try this comparison: principles are like your lunch; keep it down if you can, but if it makes you sick, heave it up.
Equality of opportunity is one thing, equality of outcome quite another. The former is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition of the latter. Yet many liberals think that any lack of equality of outcome for a given group argues an antecedent lack of equality of opportunity for that group. This is a non sequitur of the following form:
P is necessary for Q
Ergo
~Q is sufficient for ~P.
This is an invalid argument form since it is easy to find substitutions for ‘P’ and ‘Q’ that make the premise true and the conclusion false. For example, being a citizen is necessary to be eligible to vote; ergo, not being eligible to vote is sufficient to show that one is not a citizen. The conclusion is false, since there might be some other factor that disqualifies one from voting such as being a felon, or being under age. Similarly, an unequal outcome is not sufficient to show discrimination or unequal opportunity for the simple reason that there might be some other factor that explains the unequal outcome, such as a lack of competitiveness, an inability to defer gratification, or a lack of ability.
. . . I’m confused by some of your epistemic terms. You reject [in the first article referenced below] the view that we can “rigorously prove” the existence of God, and several times say that theistic arguments are not rationally compelling, by which you mean that there are no arguments “that will force every competent philosophical practitioner to accept their conclusions on pain of being irrational if he does not.“
Okay, so far I’m tracking with you. But then you go on to say that “[t]here are all kinds of evidence” for theism (not just non-naturalism), while the atheist “fails to account for obvious facts (consciousness, self-consciousness, conscience, intentionality, purposiveness, etc.) if he assumes that all that exists is in the space-time world. I will expose and question all his assumptions. I will vigorously and rigorously drive him to dogmatism. Having had all his arguments neutralized, if not refuted, he will be left with nothing better than the dogmatic assertion of his position."
So how is the atheist not irrational on your view, assuming he is apprised of your arguments? Perhaps the positive case for theism and the negative case against naturalism don’t count as demonstrations in a mathematical sense, but I’m not sure why they’re not supposed to be compelling according to your gloss on the term.
The term 'mathematical' muddies the waters since it could lead to a side-wrangle over what mathematicians are doing when they construct proofs. Let's not muddy the waters. My claim is that we have no demonstrative knowledge of the truth of theism or of the falsity of naturalism. Demonstrative knowledge is knowledge produced by a demonstration. A demonstration in this context is an argument that satisfies all of the following conditions:
1. It is deductive 2. It is valid in point of logical form 3. It is free of such informal fallacies as petitio principii 4. It is such that all its premises are true 5. It is such that all its premises are known to be true 6. It is such that its conclusion is relevant to its premises.
To illustrate (6). The following argument satisfies all of the conditions except the last and is therefore probatively worthless:
Snow is white ergo Either Obama is president or he is not.
On my use of terms, a demonstrative argument = a probative argument = a proof = a rationally compelling argument. Now clearly there are good arguments (of different sorts) that are not demonstrative, probative, rationally compelling. One type is the strong inductive argument. By definition, no such argument satisfies (1) or (2). A second type is the argument that satisfies all the conditions except (5).
Can one prove the existence of God? That is, can one produce a proof (as above defined) of the existence of God? I don't think so. For how will you satisfy condition (5)? Suppose you give argument A for the existence of God. How do you know that the premises of A are true? By argument? Suppose A has premises P1, P2, P3. Will you give arguments for these premises? Then you need three more arguments, one for each of P1, P2, P3, each of which has its own premises. A vicious infinite regress is in the offing. Needless to say, moving in an argumentative circle is no better.
At some point you will have to invoke self-evidence. You will have to say that, e.g., it is just self-evident that every event has a cause. And you will have to mean objectively self-evident, not just subjectively self-evident. But how can you prove, to yourself or anyone else, that what is subjectively self-evident is objectively self-evident? You can't, at least not with respect to states of affairs transcending your consciousness.
I conclude that no one can prove the existence of God. But one can reasonably believe that God exists. The same holds for the nonexistence of God. No one can prove the nonexistence of God. But one can reasonably believe that there is no God.
The same goes for naturalism. I cannot prove that there is more to reality than the space-time system and its contents. But I can reasonably believe it. For I have a battery of arguments each of which satisfies conditions (1), (2), (3) and (6) and may even, as far as far as I know, satisfy (4).
"So how is the atheist not irrational on your view, assuming he is apprised of your arguments?"
He is not irrational because none of my arguments are rationally compelling in the sense I supplied, namely, they are not such as to force every competent philosophical practitioner to accept their conclusions on pain of being irrational if he does not. To illustrate, consider the following argument from Peter Kreeft (based on C. S. Lewis), an argument I consider good, but not rationally compelling. I will argue (though I will not prove!) that one who rejects this argument is not irrational.
The Argument From Desire
Premise 1: Every natural, innate desire in us corresponds to some real object that can satisfy that desire.
Premise 2: But there exists in us a desire which nothing in time, nothing on earth, no creature can satisfy.
Conclusion: Therefore there must exist something more than time, earth and creatures, which can satisfy this desire.
This something is what people call "God" and "life with God forever."
This is surely not a compelling argument. In fact, as it stands, it is not even valid. But it is easily repaired. There is need of an additional premise, one to the effect that the desire that nothing in time can satisfy is a natural desire. This supplementary premise is needed for validity, but it is not obviously true. For it might be — it is epistemically possible that — this desire that nothing in time can satisfy is artificially induced by one's religious upbringing or some other factor or factors.
Furthermore, is premise (1) true? Not as it stands. Suppose I am dying of thirst in the desert. Does that desire in me correspond to some real object that can satisfy it? Does the existence of my token desire entail the existence of a token satisfier? No! For it may be that there is no potable water in the vicinity, when only potable water in the immediate vicinity can satisfy my particular thirst. At most, what the natural desire for water shows is that water had to have existed at some time. It doesn't even show that water exists now. Suppose all the water on earth is suddenly rendered undrinkable. That is consistent with the continuing existence of the natural desire/need for water.
But this is not a decisive objection since repairs can be made. One could reformulate:
1* Every type of natural, innate desire in us corresponds to some real object that can satisfy some tokens of that type of desire.
But is (1*) obviously true? It could be that our spiritual desires are not artificial, like the desire to play chess, but lacking in real objects nonetheless. It could be that their objects are merely intentional. Suppose our mental life (sentience, intentionality, self-awareness, the spiritual desires for meaning, for love, for lasting happiness, for an end to ignorance and delusion and enslavement to base desires) is just an evolutionary fluke. Our spiritual desires would then be natural as opposed to artificial, but lacking in real objects.
Why do we naturally desire, water, air, sunlight? Because without them we wouldn't have come into material existence in the first place. Speaking loosely, Nature implanted these desires in us. This is what allows us to infer the reality of the object of the desire from the desire. Now if God created us and implanted in us a desire for fellowship with him, then we could reliably infer the reality of God from the desire. But we don't know whether God exists; so it may be that the natural desire for God lacks a real object.
Obviously, one cannot define 'natural desire' as a desire that has a real and not merely intentional object, and then take the non-artificiality of a desire as proof that it is natural. That would be question-begging.
My point is that (1) or (1*) is not known to be true and is therefore rationally rejectable. The argument from desire, then, is not rationally compelling.
As for premise (2), how do we know that it is true? Granting that it is true hitherto, how do we know that it will be true in the future? The utopian dream of the progressives is precisely that we can achieve here on earth final satisfaction of our deepest desires. Now I don't believe this for a second. But I don't think one can reasonably claim to know that (2) is false. What supports it is a very reasonable induction. But inductive arguments don't prove anything.
In sum, the argument from desire, suitably deployed and rigorously articulated, helps render theistic belief rationally acceptable. But it is not a rationally compelling argument.
This is a substantial revision, in the light of recent events, of an entry from about six years ago. This post examines the fallacy that Antony Flew brought to our attention and suggests that 'No True Muslim' is an equally good name for it.
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In logic, a fallacy is not a false belief but a pattern of reasoning that is both typical and in some way specious. Specious reasoning, by the very etymology of the term, appears correct but is not. Thus a fallacy is not just any old mistake in reasoning, but a typical or recurrent mistake that has some tendency to seduce or mislead our thinking. A taxonomy of fallacies is useful insofar as it helps prevent one from seducing oneself or being seduced by others.
Fallacies are either formal or informal. An example of a formal fallacy is Affirming the Consequent. An example of an informal fallacy is Petitio Principii. Note than an argument that is formally valid can yet be informally fallacious. Arguments that beg the question are examples.
Among the so-called informal fallacies is Antony Flew's No True Scotsman. Suppose A says, "No Scotsman puts sugar in his porridge." B replies, "But my uncle Angus puts sugar in his porridge." A responds, "Your Uncle Angus is no true Scotsman!"
Second Example. Call it 'No True Muslim.' A says, "Islam is a religion of peace; Muslims do not do things like murder cartoonists and journalists with whose ideas they disagree." B replies, "On 7 January 2015, two Muslim gunmen forced their way into the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, France and killed Stéphane Charbonnier, the editor of the satirical weekly, and several others." A responds, "Those gunmen were not true Muslims."
Third Example. A: "Nowadays all chess players use algebraic notation." B: "Not so, Ed Yetman does not use algebraic notation. He uses descriptive notation exclusively." A: "Ed Yetman? You call him a chess player?!"
Fourth Example. A: "When a complete neuroscience is achieved, we will know everything about mind, brain, and consciousness." B: "I can't agree, even a completed neuroscience will not explain how consciousness arises from brain activity." A: "A neuroscience that can't explain consciousness would not be a completed neuroscience."
Clearly, something has gone wrong in these examples. Person A is making an illicit dialectical move of some kind. The general form of the mistake seems to be as follows. Person A makes a universal assertion, one featuring a quantifier such as 'all,' 'no,' 'everything' whether explicit or tacit. Person B then adduces a counterexample to the universal claim. Person A illicitly dismisses the counterexample by modifying his original assertion with the use of 'true' or 'real' some equivalent designed to exclude the counterexample. Thus Uncle Angus is excluded as a counterexample by dismissing him as not a true Scotman, and the Muslim gunmen are excluded by dismissing them as not true Muslims.
The fallacy is informal since the fallaciousness depends on the content or subject matter. So we need to ask: When is it not a fallacy? By my count, there are at least four classes of cases in which the No True Scotsman move is not fallacious.
1. When the original assertion is either a logical truth or an analytic truth. If I point out that all bachelors are male, and you reply that your sister Mary is a bachelor, then I am justified in dismissing your 'counterexample' by saying that Mary is not a true bachelor, or a bachelor in the strict sense of the term.
2. When the original assertion is synthetic but necessary. If Saul Kripke is right, 'Water is H2O' is synthetic but necessary. If I say that water is H2O, and you object that heavy water is not H2O but D2O, then I am entitled to respond that heavy water is not water.
3. When the original assertion involves stipulation. Suppose Smith defines a naturalist as one who denies the existence of God, and I respond that McTaggart is an atheist who is not a naturalist. Have I shown that Smith is wrong? Not all. Smith may respond that McTaggart is not a naturalist as he defines the term. Wholly or partially stipulative definitions cannot be said to be either true or false although they can be more or less useful for classificatory purposes. Second example. Suppose Jack claims that libertarians favor open borders and Jill responds by adducing the case of libertarian John Jay Ray who does not favor open borders. Jack is within his epistemic rights in saying that Ray is not a full-fledged libertarian.
4. When the original assertion specifies the content of a belief-system or worldview. Suppose I point out that Communists are anti-religion, believing as they do that it is the opiate of the masses, an impediment to social progress, the sigh of the oppressed, flowers on the chains that enslave, etc. You say you know people who are Communists but are not against religion. I am entitled to the retort that such 'Communists' are not Communists at all; they are not true or real or genuine Communists, that they are CINOs, Commies in Name Only, etc. I have not committed the fallacy under discussion.
Back to the Muslims. A Muslim is so-called because of his adherence to the religion, Islam. There are certain core beliefs that are definitive of Islam, and thus essential to it, and that a Muslim must accept if he is to count as a Muslim. To take a blindingly evident example, no Muslim can be an atheist. Also: no Muslim can be a trinitarian, or a pantheist, or a polytheist, or believe in the Incarnation. And of course there are more specific doctrines about the Koran, about the prophet Muhammad, etc., that are essential to the faith of Muslims.
Now suppose I point out that Muslims deny that Jesus is the son of God. You reply that your Muslim friend Ali accepts that Jesus is the son of God. Then I commit no fallacy if I retort that Ali is no true Muslim.
The Supreme Court justices in the majority in the 5-4 Hobby Lobby decision are all male: Alito, Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Kennedy. If someone seeks to discredit their decision on that ground, say this:
Arguments don't have testicles!
If the person persists, then point out that females dominated the minority in that decision.
One of the purposes of this site is to combat the stupidity of Political Correctness, a stupidity that in many contemporary liberals, i.e., leftists, is willful and therefore morally censurable. The euphemism 'undocumented worker' is a good example of a PC expression. It does not require great logical acumen to see that 'undocumented worker' and 'illegal alien' are not coextensive expressions. The extension of a term is the class of things to which it applies. In the diagram below, let A be the class of illegal aliens, B the class of undocumented workers, and A^B the intersection of these two classes. All three regions in the diagram are non-empty, which shows that A and B are not coextensive, and so are not the same class. Since A and B are not the same class, 'undocumented worker' and 'illegal alien' do not have the same intension or meaning. Differing in both extension and intension, these expressions are not intersubstitutable.
To see why, note first that there are illegal aliens who are not workers since they are either petty criminals, or members of organizedcriminal gangs e.g., MS-13, some of whose members are illegal aliens, or terrorists, or too young to work, or unable to work. Note second that there are illegal aliens who have documents all right — forged documents. Note third that there are undocumented workers who are not aliens: there are American citizens who work but without the legally requisite licenses and permits.
So the correct term is 'illegal alien.' It is descriptive and accurate and there is no reason why it should not be used.
Now will this little logical exercise convince a leftist to use language responsibly and stop obfuscating the issue? Of course not. Leftism in some of its forms is willfully embraced reality denial, and in other of its forms is a cognitive aberration, something like a mental illness, in need of therapy rather than refutation. In a longer post I would finesse the point by discussing the cognitive therapy of Stoic and neo-Stoic schools, which does include some logical refutation of unhealthy views and attitudes, but my rough-and-ready point stands: one cannot refute the sick. They need treatment and quarantine and those who go near them should employ appropriate prophylactics.
So why did I bother writing the above? Because there are people who have not yet succumbed to the PC malady and might benefit from a bit of logical prophylaxis. One can hope.
Our expat friend, Seoul man, and professor of English, Jeff Hodges, has been puzzling over whether an 'ought' statement can be validly derived from an 'is' statement. Here is his example, put in my own way:
1. Democratic regimes contribute more to human flourishing than do non-democratic ones.
Therefore
2. If we want to maximize human flourishing, then we ought to support democratic regimes.
(1) purports to state what is the case. In this sense, it is a factual claim. On this use of 'factual,' a factual claim need not be true. ('I live in New Mexico' is false but factual as opposed to normative.) Factual claims on this use of 'factual' are opposed to claims as to what one ought to do or ought not to do, or what ought to be, or ought not to be, or what is better or worse or what is more valuable or less valuable.
It is worth noting that both (1) and (2) are in the indicative mood. Thus we ought to distinguish (2) from the hypothetical (as opposed to categorical) imperative
2*. To maximize human flourishing, support democratic regimes!
One difference is that while it makes sense to inquire whether (2) is true or false, it makes no sense to inquire whether (2*) is either true or false. It follows that our question is not whether an imperative can be validly inferred from an indicative.
Let us also note that (2) is a conditional. It is a compound statement consisting of two simple component statements, an antecedent (protasis) and and a consequent (apodosis). To assert a conditional is not to assert either its antecedent or its consequent. It is to assert a connection between the two. For example, if I assert that if the light is on, then current is flowing through the filament, I do not thereby assert that the light is on, or that current is flowing throught the filament; what I assert is a connection between the two, in this case a causal linkage.
Given this fact about conditionals, I do not consider Jeff's example to show that one can validily derive an 'ought' from an 'is,' a normative statement from a factual statement. Both (1) and (2) are nonnormative statements. The first is obviously nonnormative. But the second is as well despite the fact the 'ought' occurs within it. For all it asserts — or, to be precise, all a person asserts who assertively utters a token of the sentence in question — is a connection between two propositions, a connection that it nonnormative.
We could of course detach the consequent of (2) thusly:
1. Democratic regimes contribute more to human flourishing than do non-democratic ones.
2a. We want to promote human flourishing
Therefore
2c. We ought to support democratic regimes.
(2c) is unabashedly normative. But it does not follow from the premises which are both of them nonnormative.
So Jeff has not given a counterexample to what philosophers claim when they claim that an 'ought' cannot be derived from an 'is.'
But I will irenically add that there is nothing wrong with Jeff's original argument. It is just that it is not an example of the derivation of a normative statement from a nonnormative one. It is an example of how a statement containing the word 'ought' can be validily derived from a statement not containing the word 'ought.' If this is all that Jeff means to show, then he deserves the coveted MavPhil imprimatur and nihil obstat.
Crucial here is the fact that not every statement containing 'ought' is a normative statement. Besides (2), there is this example: 'I just replaced the battery, so my car ought to start.' This is not a statement about what anyone ought to do, or even about what ought to be; it is a prediction. One could just as well say, 'I just replaced the battery in my car, so it is highly likely that the car will start.'
And now it occurs to me that 'ought' can be paraphrased away, salva significatione, even in the case of (2). Try this:
2p. If we want to maximize human flourishing, then it is necessary that we support democratic regimes.
