Baby Talk and First Grade English

It is annoying when a senator says that such-and-such is a 'no-no.' Closely related is the phenomenon of what might be called 'first grade English.' George Bush and others have spoken of  'growing the economy.' One grows tomatoes, not economies. But perhaps I am being peevish and pedantic.

What about the current overuse of 'broken'? One hears that the Social Security admininstration and the Immigration and Nauralization Service are 'broken.' One breaks things like guitar strings, bicycle chains, and glasses. That which is broken no longer functions as it was intended to. A broken X is not a suboptimally functioning X but a nonfunctioning X. Clearly, neither the SSA nor the INS are 'broken' strictly speaking. They just don't function very well and are in dire need of reform.

So why call them 'broken'? Is your vocabulary so impoverished that no better word comes to mind?

 
"President Obama has said plainly that America's health care system is broken." That from Peter Singer in "Why We Must Ration Health Care" (NYT Magazine, July 19, 2009, p. 40.)  I guess that is why Canadians and others come to the USA for medical treatment they cannot get under a socialized system.

Why are people such linguistic lemmings? If some clown uses 'broken' inappropriately, why ape him? One has to be quite a lemming to ape a clown. (How's that for a triple mixed metaphor?) In a cognate rant, Issues and Problems, I take issue with 'issue' and its over- and misuse. I have a real 'issue' with that.   A longer piece, English for Boneheads: Some Torts on the Mother Tongue, may also be of interest or at least get your blood up.

 
People who employ baby talk and first grade English in contexts that demand careful thought demonstrate their thoughtlessness and unseriousness.  Precision in the use of language may not be sufficient for clear and productive thinking, but it is necessary.  Language matters.
 

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?

Continue reading “A Right to Health Care?”

‘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.