Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Logica Utens

  • Why Lie When You Have Good Arguments?

    Last week I pointed out Senator Charles Schumer's blatant lie about Tea Partiers.  Apparently, Senator Jon Kyl has also lied and then gone on to justify his lie in a  manner most creative: . . . Arizona senator Jon Kyl used his time on the Senate floor during a budget debate to claim that abortions…

  • Gratuitous Evil and Begging the Question: Does LAFE Beg the Question?

    What is it for an argument to beg the question? I suggest that an argument begs the question if it is impossible to know one of the premises to be true without knowing that the conclusion is true. The simplest question-begging arguments are of the form p—p. Clearly, every argument of this form is valid,…

  • Conservative Activism, The Left’s Incomprehension, and the Genetic Fallacy (2010 Version)

    'Conservative activism' has an oxymoronic ring to it.  Political activism does not come naturally to conservatives, as I point out in The Conservative Disadvantage.   But the times they are a 'changin' and so I concluded that piece by saying that  we now need to become active. "Not in the manner of the leftist who…

  • Of Haircuts, Amphibolies, and Maxims

    I got my quarterly haircut the other day.  A neighbor remarked, "I see you got a haircut," to which I responded with the old joke, "I got 'em all cut." In this as in so many other cases the humor derives from ambiguity, in this case amphiboly (syntactic ambiguity.)  The spoken 'I see you got a…

  • The Ground Zero Mosque: The Controversy Continues

    And it seems to be heating up as the anniversary of 9/11 approaches.  I suspect dialogue with liberals on this topic is impossible due to what I call the 'two planets problem':  conservatives and liberals live on different planets.  You could cash out the metaphor by saying  that we differ radically in temperament, sense of life,…

  • On the Illicit Use of ‘By Definition’

    What is wrong with the following sentence:  "Excellent health care is by definition redistributional"?  It is from a speech by Donald Berwick,  President Obama's nominee to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, speaking to a British audience about why he favors government-run health care. I have no objection to someone arguing that health care…

  • Nerd, Geek, Dweeb, and Dork

    Ever fret over the correct use of these terms?  This Venn diagram will set you straight.  (HT: Mike Valle.  From this site.)

  • ‘No News is Good News’

    Spencer Case, 'on the ground' in Afghanistan, writes: Try translating the following sentence into logic:  "No news is good news." Whenever I try it, I end up saying that there isn't any good news and that's not what I mean to say. If you're not too terribly busy, I'd like to see how the trick is…

  • De Trinitate: The Statue/Lump Analogy and the ‘Is’ of Composition

    Thanks to Bill Clinton, it is now widely appreciated that much rides on what the meaning of ‘is’ is. Time was, when only philosophers were aware of this. In our Trinitarian explorations with the help of our Jewish atheist friend Peter we have discussed the ‘is’ of identity and the ‘is’ of predication. We saw that…

  • Is The Doctrine of the Trinity Logically Coherent? (Peter Lupu)

    In this installment, Peter Lupu, atheist, defends the logical coherence of the doctrine of the Trinity.  My critical comments follow in blue. It may be somewhat of an astonishment to those who know me well that I should venture to defend the doctrine of the Trinity. I am not a Christian; I am not religious;…

  • A Common Liberal Fallacy: The Diachronic Red Herring

    Much opposition to contemporary political conservatism involves a curious argumentative fallacy that I shall dub the Diachronic Red Herring. A liberal succumbs to this fallacy when he (i) appeals to the past accomplishments of liberalism to justify contemporary liberalism while ignoring the ways in which contemporary liberalism has come to occupy extreme positions; and (ii)…

  • The Woman’s Body Argument

    The following is an abortion argument one often hears.  It is sometimes called  the Woman's Body Argument.  I will argue that it is not rationally compelling. 1. The fetus is a part of a woman's body.2. A woman has the right to do whatever she wants with any part of her body.Therefore3. A woman has the right…

  • Fetal Rights and the Death Penalty: Consistent or Inconsistent?

    Is it consistent to support both fetal rights and the moral acceptability of capital punishment? That depends on what is meant by 'consistent.' Let us begin by asking whether the following propositions are logically consistent. P1. A living human fetus has a right to life which cannot be overridden except in rare cases (e.g. threat…

  • The Potentiality Universality Principle and Feinberg’s “Logical Point”

    I have already introduced  PIP, PEP, and PAP as three principles governing potentiality in the precise sense relevant to the Potentiality Argument. Now I introduce a fourth principle for your inspection which I will call the Potentiality Universality Principle: PUP: Necessarily, if a normal F has the potentiality to become a G, then every normal…

  • The Potentiality Argument Against Abortion and Feinberg’s Logical Point About Potentiality

    I claim that the standard objections to the Potentiality Argument (PA) are very weak and can be answered. This is especially so with respect to Joel Feinberg's "logical point about potentiality," which alone I will discuss in this post. This often-made objection is extremely weak and should persuade no rational person. But first a guideline…