{"id":10764,"date":"2011-04-16T04:39:57","date_gmt":"2011-04-16T04:39:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/04\/16\/never-bullshit-mitt-romney-on-non-sequiturs-and-the-null-set\/"},"modified":"2011-04-16T04:39:57","modified_gmt":"2011-04-16T04:39:57","slug":"never-bullshit-mitt-romney-on-non-sequiturs-and-the-null-set","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/04\/16\/never-bullshit-mitt-romney-on-non-sequiturs-and-the-null-set\/","title":{"rendered":"Never Bullshit! Mitt Romney on Non Sequiturs and the Null Set"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thinking about the mendacity of Obama, Schumer, and Kyl, I was put in mind of a post of mine dated 6 June 2007 from the old Powerblogs site in which I expose some bullshitting by Mitt Romney.  Here it is again.  If you want to be taken seriously by intelligent people, you must never use words you do not understand in an attempt to impress.  The only people you will impress will be fools.  By the way, some feel Romney is a viable Republican pick for 2012.  I wonder.  His being Mormon may not be a problem, but how remove the albatross of RomneyCare about his neck?  We have moved too far in the socialist direction.  We need to move back the other way, toward liberty and self-reliance, and I rather doubt that Romney is the one to lead us.<\/span><\/p>\n

…………..<\/span><\/p>\n

Governor Mitt Romney was asked the following question during last night's debate<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

     We've lost 3,400 troops; civilian casualties are even higher, and<\/span>
     the Iraqi government does not appear ready to provide for the<\/span>
     security of its own country. Knowing everything you know right now,<\/span>
     was it a mistake for us to invade Iraq?<\/span><\/p>\n

Romney replied:<\/span><\/p>\n

     Well, the question is kind of a non sequitur, if you will, and what<\/span>
     I mean by that — or a null set. And that is that if you're saying<\/span>
     let's turn back the clock, and Saddam Hussein had opened up his<\/span>
     country to IAEA inspectors, and they'd come in and they'd found<\/span>
     that there were no weapons of mass destruction, had Saddam Hussein,<\/span>
     therefore, not violated United Nations resolutions, we wouldn't be<\/span>
     in the conflict we're in. But he didn't do those things, and we<\/span>
     knew what we knew at the point we made the decision to get in. I<\/span>
     supported the president's decision based on what we knew at that<\/span>
     time. I think we were underprepared and underplanned for what came<\/span>
     after we knocked down Saddam Hussein.<\/span><\/p>\n

Romney's response was quite good especially given the pressure he was under. But why did he spoil it by inserting unnecessary terminology that he obviously doesn't understand? It makes no sense to refer to a <\/span>question as a non sequitur. A non sequitur is a proposition that abbreviates or 'telescopes' an invalid argument. For example, 'If the war in Iraq were serious, then we wouldn't be trying to fight it with <\/span>an all-volunteer force.' That is a non sequitur in that the consequent of the conditional proposition does not follow from the antecedent. Non sequitur<\/em> just means 'It does not follow.' But an interrogative form of words does not express a proposition. (Possible exception: rhetorical questions; but the question posed to Romney was not  rhetorical.) So to refer to a question as a non sequitur show a serious lack of understanding.<\/span><\/p>\n

Romney should have replied simply as follows. 'It was not a mistake to invade Iraq since at the time the decision was made, that was the right course of action given what we knew.'<\/span><\/p>\n

It is also nonsensical to refer to a question as "a null set." For one thing, there is only one null set. Talk of 'a' null set suggests that there are or could be several. More importantly, a question is not a<\/span>
set, let alone a set with no members. "But isn't a question a set of words?" Well, there is for any question the set of words in which it is formulated, but that set is not identical to the question. But I<\/span>
 won't go any further into this since, although it leads into fascinating question in metaphysics and the philosophy of language, it  leads away from the point I want to make.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span>
"And what point would that be?" Never bullshit!<\/em> You make yourself look stupid to people who really know. Never pretend to know what you don't know. Don't try to impress people with fancy jargon unless you really  know how to use it. Concern for truth dictates concern for precision in the use of language.<\/span><\/p>\n

Call me a pedant if you like, but language matters<\/a>!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thinking about the mendacity of Obama, Schumer, and Kyl, I was put in mind of a post of mine dated 6 June 2007 from the old Powerblogs site in which I expose some bullshitting by Mitt Romney.  Here it is again.  If you want to be taken seriously by intelligent people, you must never use words … Continue reading “Never Bullshit! Mitt Romney on Non Sequiturs and the Null Set”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[324,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bullshit","category-language-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}