Category: Logica Utens
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On the Illicit Use of ‘By Definition.’ 2012 ‘Gun’ Version
What follows is a reposting of an entry that first appeared in these pages on 19 July 2010. The reposting is prompted by the following surprising statement by Joe Nocera: "But it is equally true that anyone who goes into a school with a semiautomatic and kills 20 children and six adults is, by definition,…
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Bad Economic Reasoning About the National Debt
When I study the writings of professional economists I sometime have to shake my shaggy philosopher's head. Try this passage on for size: $16 trillion is the amount of Treasury debt outstanding at the moment. The more relevant figure is the amount of debt the federal government owes to people and institutions other than itself.…
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At the Supermarket: I Think of Hegel’s Logic
I was cruising the booze aisle in the local supermarket yesterday in search of wines for Thursday's Thanksgiving feast. I got into conversation with a friendly twenty-something dude who worked there. I said I was looking for sweet vermouth. He thought it was used to make martinis and so I explained that martinis call for dry vermouth while…
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Arguments Don’t Have Testicles
If someone questions your right to have an opinion about abortion if you are man, say Arguments don't have testicles.
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The Converse Does Not Hold
If you paid attention in Logic 101 you may remember that the immediate inference called 'conversion' is valid for the I and E forms of the traditional square of opposition but not for the A and O forms. Poetic illustration courtesy of Alexander Pope (1688-1744) where 'Every poet is a fool' is an A-proposition: Sir, I…
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On the Word ‘Racism’ and Some of its Definitions
'Racism' and 'racist' are words used by liberals as all-purpose semantic bludgeons. Proof of this is that the terms are never defined, and so can be used in wider or narrower senses depending on the polemical and ideological purposes at hand. In common parlance 'racism' and 'racist' are pejoratives, indeed, terms of abuse. This is why it is…
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Derbyshire’s ‘Racism’
I got wind of Derb's defenestration, and the concomitant crapstorm of Internet commentary, a little late, but I've been making up for lost time. I found this curious passage over at RedState, a self-professedly conservative website (emphasis added): Derbyshire likes to pepper his racist rants with “facts” that generally consist of social studies that are…
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Enthymeme
A great mind is not upset by a petty matter. Therefore, our minds are petty.
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Time, Truth, and Truth-Making: An Antilogism Revisited and Transmogrified
Earlier, I presented the following, which looks to be an antilogism. An antilogism, by definition, is an inconsistent triad. This post considers whether the triad really is logically inconsistent, and so really is an antilogism. 1. Temporally Unrestricted Excluded Middle: The principle that every declarative sentence is either true, or if not true, then false…
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Pascal on the Subject of Experience: A Non Sequitur?
I recently quoted Blaise Pascal, Pensees #108 (Krailsheimer, p. 57): "What part of us feels pleasure? Is it our hand, our arm, our flesh, or our blood? It must obviously be something immaterial." A reader comments, "Doesn't P. 108 strike you as a hopeless non-sequitur, if we take it as an argument at all? Just…
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Critical Thinking and the Status Quo
Critical thinking is not necessarily opposed to the status quo. To criticize is not to oppose, but to sift, to assess, to assay, to evaluate, to separate the true from the false. A critical thinker may well end up supporting the existing state of things in this or that respect. It is a fallacy of…
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Accidental Sameness and its Logical Properties
I should thank Richard Hennessey for motivating me to address a topic I haven't until these last few days discussed in these pages, namely, that of accidental sameness. Let us adopt for the time being a broadly Aristotelian ontology with its standard nomenclature of substance and accident, act and potency, form and matter, etc. Within such a…
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All is Impermanent? Impermanence and Self-Reference
I have long been fascinated by forms of philosophical refutation that exploit the overt or covert self-reference of a thesis. To warm up, consider 1. All generalizations are false. Since (1) is a generalization, (1) refers to itself. So if (1) is true, then (1) is false. On the other hand, if (1) is…
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Hypostatization and Plural Reference
In Plural Reference, Franklin Mason writes that "Vallicella is often a delight, but upon occasion he annoys me to no end." Apparently I remind him of a "philosophical pugilist," a former colleague perhaps, who is obnoxious in the manner of all-too-many analytic philosophers. (One such told me once that if one is not willing to become…
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Farrell, “Tookie,” Hannity and Colmes, and Bad Arguments
My last post ended with a reference to "Tookie" Williams. Here is a post from the old Powerblogs site dated 29 November 2005: I just viewed the Stanley "Tookie" Williams segment on Hannity and Colmes. Williams, co-founder of the L.A. Crips gang, and convicted of four brutal murders, faces execution on December 13th in California. …