The Meno Paradox and the Difference Between Paradoxes and Arguments

S. C. e-mails:

I stumbled onto a question in my studies today that I am not sure how to resolve and you seem like just the person to ask. The question is this: what, exactly, makes a paradox different from a regular old argument? Consider: we tend to call paradoxes those arguments which seem sound and yet whose conclusions we are not inclined to accept. Hence, what one of my professors calls Meno’s Paradox is not a paradox in Meno’s eyes. For him it’s simply an argument that shows we can’t come to know things.  I think the same can be said for Zeno’s paradoxes. Zeno was not trying to conclude with contradictions for us to be puzzled over—he was trying to give reductio ad absurdum arguments against motion and time. If Zeno was right about time and motion then none of his arguments are paradoxes any more than the problem of evil is a paradox for the atheist. It seems to me that the only thing that makes a paradox a paradox is that the consumer is unwilling to accept its conclusion (or has independent reason to think the conclusion must be wrong). Am I missing something here?

What is the difference between a paradox and an argument?  An excellent question the answer to which depends on how 'paradox' and 'argument' are defined.  Following Nicholas Rescher, I would define a paradox as a set of individually plausible but collectively inconsistent propositions.   Meno's paradox, also known as the paradox of inquiry, is an example.  It can be cast in the form of the following aporetic tetrad:

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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Mary Travers

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Mary Travers of the popular 1960's folk trio "Peter, Paul and Mary" passed away on Wednesday, from leukemia, at age 72.  Travers and Co. did perhaps as much as anyone to popularize the songs of the young Bob Dylan.  The best known of them is 'Blowin' in the Wind," which became an anthem of the civil rights movement. 

Here it is in a 1966 live performance.

Unlike Travers and Joan Baez, who knew how to make Dylan's songs sound beautiful — as witness this version of "Farewell Angelina" — Dylan soon distanced himself from the politics of the Left as he 'explains' in "My Back Pages" an electrified and electrifying version of which is here. "Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."

It would be a mistake to think that the Left owns Dylan.  The case for Dylan as conservative is argued at RightWingBob.com.

Though the news accounts don't mention it, Mary Travers was a red diaper baby.  Here is another red diaper baby, David Horowitz, on Travers and her fellow travelers:

At a Freedom Forum conference on 1968, Life magazine editor and former Sixties activist Robert Friedman claimed that most student protestors were not simply trying to avoid the draft (a thesis I have elsewhere maintained), but were "motivated by something beyond that was weighing on us." Folksinger (and former Sixties activist) Mary Travers explained the "something" as idealism. Then she said this:

"I think sometimes that that was the last generation who believed in the American dream and its myths. These kids had gotten involved in the civil-rights movement and they were on the side of the angels, they were going to make America the country that it’s always said it was."

Referring to oneself in the third person is a characteristic evasion, but it is only the beginning of the bullshit. Come off it Mary. Your diapers were red. Your father was a hack novelist for the Communist Party, USA. When other kids were going to Frank Sinatra concerts you were headed for the Party’s annual May Day parade to march against the Wall Street war-mongers and to show your solidarity with the peace-loving commissars of the Soviet police state and their beneficent leader Joe Stalin. In the Sixties, you didn’t believe in the American dream. You lusted after the vision of a Communist utopia, mid-wived by armies of bearded guerrillas or carried on the wings of a MIG-21. Why all the liberal fol-de-rol? Why can’t you just tell it like it was?

Although the music of the 1960's was great, the idealism was much of it tainted and misdirected.  Some sober reflection on what really 'went down' during those heady years is a salutary counterbalance to the misty-eyed nostalgia we '60s veterans are wont to indulge in as our heroes fall one by one into oblivion.

Rorty’s Definition of ‘Relativism’ and its Illiberal Consequences

Richard Rorty's writings put me off for several reasons, not the least of which is the way he distorts issues and definitions for his own benefit. The man is obviously a relativist as anyone can see, but he doesn't want to accept that label. So what does he do? He redefines the term so that it applies to no one:

"Relativism" is the view that every belief on a certain topic, or perhaps about any topic, is as good as every other. No one holds this view. Except for the occasional cooperative freshman, one cannot find anybody who says that two incompatible opinions on an important topic are equally good. The philosophers who get called "relativists" are those who say that the grounds for choosing between such opinions are less algorithmic than had been thought.

[. . .]

So the real issue is not between people who think that one view is as good as another and people who do not. It is between those think our culture, or purposes, or intuitions, cannot be supported except conversationally, and people who still hope for other sorts of support. (Consequences of Pragmatism, U. of Minnesota Press, 1982, pp. 166-167.)

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Does He Lie?

A fine piece by Charles Krauthammer.  Excerpt:

And then there's the famous contretemps about health insurance for illegal immigrants. Obama said they would not be insured. Well, all four committee-passed bills in Congress allow illegal immigrants to take part in the proposed Health Insurance Exchange.

But more importantly, the problem is that laws are not self-enforcing. If they were, we'd have no illegal immigrants because, as I understand it, it's illegal to enter the United States illegally. We have laws against burglary, too. But we also provide for cops and jails on the assumption that most burglars don't voluntarily turn themselves in.

When Republicans proposed requiring proof of citizenship, the Democrats twice voted that down in committee. Indeed, after Rep. Joe Wilson's "You lie!" shout-out, the Senate Finance Committee revisited the language of its bill to prevent illegal immigrants from getting any federal benefits. Why would the Finance Committee fix a nonexistent problem?

‘He’s Only Reading’

This just over the transom from Londiniensis:

Your last post puts me in mind of the hoary old story of the timid student hovering outside his tutor’s door not knowing whether to knock and disturb the great man.  At that moment one of the college servants walks past: “Oh, it’s all right dear, you can go in. The professor’s not doing anything, he’s only reading”.

Ambivalence towards reading and other activities in the life of the mind reflects the fact that we are embodied spirits.  As spirits, we dream and imagine, think and question, doubt and despair.  We ask what is real and what is not.  It is no surprise, then, that we question the reality and importance of reading and writing and study when these activities are not geared to what is immediate and utilitarian such as the earning of money.  Our doubts are fueled in no small measure by the lethargy and hebetude of the body with its oppressive presence and incessant demands.  The spectator of all time and existence, to borrow a beautiful phrase from Plato's Republic, should  fully expect to be deemed  one who is 'not really doing anything' by the denizens of the Cave.

The bias against the spirit is reflected in the phrase 'gainful employment.'  What is intended is pecuniary gain, as if there is no other kind.  The bias, however, is not without  its justification, as we are embodied beings subject to all the vicissitudes and debilities of material beings generally.

Companion post:  Work, Money, Living, and Livelihood

Books and Reality and Books

I am as confirmed a bibliophile as I am a scribbler. But books and bookishness can appear in an unfavorable light. I may call myself a bibliophile, but others will say 'bookworm.' My mother, seeing me reading, more than once recommended that I go outside and do something. What the old lady didn't appreciate was that mine was a higher doing, and that I was preparing myself to live by my wits and avoid grunt jobs, which is what I succeeded in doing.

All things human are ambiguous and so it is with books and bookishness by which I mean their reading, writing, buying, selling, trading, admiring, collecting, cataloging, treasuring, fingering, storing, and protecting. Verbiage, endless verbiage! Dusty tomes and dry paper from floor to ceiling! Whether written or spoken, words appear at one or more removes from reality, assuming one knows what that is.

But what exactly is it, and where is it to be found? In raw sensation? In thoughtless action? In contemplative inaction? In amoral animal vitality? In the fool's paradise of travel? In the diaspora of entertainment and amusement? In the piling up of consumer goods? In finite competitive selfhood? In the quest for name and fame? Is it to be found at all, or rather made? Is it to be discovered or decided?

It appears that we are back to our 'unreal' questions about reality and the real, questions that are asked and answered at the level of thought and written about in books, books, and more books . . . .

Be Positive!

The Cloudview Trailhead is the one nearest to my house. It is a bit hard to get to as one must negotiate a number of turns. One fellow didn't like people driving onto his property in search of it so he posted a sign: Not the Trailhead! Some time ago I notice he had replaced his sign with a new one depicting an arrow that pointed in the trailhead's direction.

Therein lies a moral: how much better to be positive than negative! The first sign said where the trailhead is not. The second one did that too (by implication) but also pointed out where the trailhead is.

Jimmy Carter, Race-Baiter

This is hard to believe.  "I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African American," Carter tells us in the video clip to which I have just linked. 

First of all, what is being "intensely demonstrated" at town hall meetings and mass rallies throughout the land is not animosity toward the person Barack Obama, but disagreement with the ideas and policies he champions.  Fiscal irresponsibility and socialism are what the protesters primarily oppose.  Obama they oppose secondarily as the spokesman of these ideas.   Second, disagreement with Obama's ideas and policies has nothing  to do with the man's race.  If Jimmy Carter were now president and forwarded the same proposals the opposition would be the same.

It's about ideas, not about a man or his race.

Since Mr Carter is not unintelligent, he is capable of understanding the two simple points I have made.  So we must conclude that his injection of race into the debate  is nothing more than an attempt to distract attention from the issues.  'Playing the race card' is perhaps the signature liberal-left tactic.  The race card has become the liberal-left calling card.  They play it because it works.  And every time they do it we must call them on it.

So, Mr. Carter, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.  You really ought to be above this sort of thing. We expect this from a two-bit scribbler like Maureen Dowd, but from you?

Are there racists among the those who stand against socialism and for fiscal responsibility?  Yes indeed.  But so what? There are disreputable elements in every group.  Think of the dubious characters among Obama's associates.

An Inappropriate Use of ‘Inappropriate’

Too many people nowadays are afraid to use no-nonsense words like ‘wrong,’ ‘immoral,’ and the like. So they employ ‘inappropriate’: ‘Clinton’s behavior in the Oval Office with Monica Lewinsky was inappropriate.’

Sorry, but that is an inappropriate use of ‘inappropriate.’ Mr. Clinton’s behavior with his subordinate was morally wrong. The following sentence illustrates an appropriate use: ‘It would have been inappropriate of Mr. Clinton had he attended the black tie affair dressed in a swimsuit.’

For My Divorced Friends

A little poem by Dorothy Parker:

Comment

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.

(From the front matter of Joseph Epstein, Divorced in America: Marriage in an Age of Possibility, E. P. Dutton, 1974.)

Rorty on Truth: An Argument Refuted

In an earlier Rorty installment I said, among other things, that "He wants to substitute rhetoric for argument but without quite giving up argument. So he ends up giving shoddy arguments . . . ." You think I'm being unfair, don't you? Well, let's see. Here is a passage from Richard Rorty,  Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity,  Cambridge UP 1989, p. 5:

Truth cannot be out there — cannot exist independently of the human mind — because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the world can be true or false. The world on its own, — unaided by the describing activities of human beings — cannot.

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Digital Camera Warnings

My Canon PowerShot SD600 digital camera is a marvel of engineering. The amount of human intelligence embodied in this object the size of a pack of cigarettes — please forgive the politically incorrect comparison — is staggering to this old engineering student. All the more remarkable, therefore, is the ineptitude of the writing found in the User Guide. The following bolded passages are verbatim quotations:

Do not look directly at the sun or at other intense light sources through the viewfinder that could damage your eyesight.

But isn't a viewfinder that could damage one's eyes a serious design flaw?

Wrist strap: Placement of the strap around the child's neck could result in asphyxiation.

So it is not just any child that could be asphyxiated  in this manner, but only some particular child? A child whose head is so tiny that one could get the wrist strap over it?

Memory card: Dangerous if accidentally swallowed. If this occurs, contact a doctor immediately.

Is swallowing it harmless if done deliberately?

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