Losing Games
From a (rebroadcast) interview I just heard with (the late) Philip Roth.
After Portnoy's Complaint, his parents' friends were giving them a hard time about what a bad boy he was, and he told them this: "Say, 'You don't know how bad he is! The things we've had to put up with -- it was a nightmare! Now the whole world knows, thank God.' But don't defend me. That's a losing game."
We've all played these "losing games" here on the forum. Usually someone will accuse the other side of playing a winning game: your position allows -- nay, requires you to reinterpret everything I say in your terms, so that you're right even when you're wrong. Heads you win tails I lose. "Have you stopped beating your boyfriend?" might be a winning game of this kind.
But I wonder if in some cases it isn't just something about the game itself, the way it's structured. I don't mean some hippy-dippy "Why does it have to be a competition?" I mean in the way questioning and answering works, who's on the offensive and who on the defensive, who has the burden of proof, etc. etc.
Posters accused of playing a winning game don't usually seem to have had that as an intention. They're doing the best they can like most people here, and suddenly they're told, "If I answer your question, the terrorists win."
So I'm thinking of two ways communication can fail badly:
(1) A winning-losing game arises without either side realizing it. Both sides could still be acting in good faith, but the structure of exchange they've fallen into is not what they think it is. (Given good faith, the winning side should want to know what's happening.)
(2) It might be that the game does not have this structure, but one side interprets their position as losing and blames the other side for playing a winning game.
After Portnoy's Complaint, his parents' friends were giving them a hard time about what a bad boy he was, and he told them this: "Say, 'You don't know how bad he is! The things we've had to put up with -- it was a nightmare! Now the whole world knows, thank God.' But don't defend me. That's a losing game."
We've all played these "losing games" here on the forum. Usually someone will accuse the other side of playing a winning game: your position allows -- nay, requires you to reinterpret everything I say in your terms, so that you're right even when you're wrong. Heads you win tails I lose. "Have you stopped beating your boyfriend?" might be a winning game of this kind.
But I wonder if in some cases it isn't just something about the game itself, the way it's structured. I don't mean some hippy-dippy "Why does it have to be a competition?" I mean in the way questioning and answering works, who's on the offensive and who on the defensive, who has the burden of proof, etc. etc.
Posters accused of playing a winning game don't usually seem to have had that as an intention. They're doing the best they can like most people here, and suddenly they're told, "If I answer your question, the terrorists win."
So I'm thinking of two ways communication can fail badly:
(1) A winning-losing game arises without either side realizing it. Both sides could still be acting in good faith, but the structure of exchange they've fallen into is not what they think it is. (Given good faith, the winning side should want to know what's happening.)
(2) It might be that the game does not have this structure, but one side interprets their position as losing and blames the other side for playing a winning game.
Comments (95)
There's a lot riding on some of the discussions on the forum. For me, it's about self-definition. How I see myself. My ideas are important to me. Laying them out here is a way of testing them and myself. That can lead to competition. If someone makes me see something differently, I may have to change my self-image. That can lead to games. Also, those of us on the forum are generally pretty good at thinking. It's our hobby. We do it recreationally. Like tennis or golf. We like to compete at what we're good at.
I'd like to think that, as I've gained more confidence in my ideas and how to express them, I've become less competitive and more collegial and therefore, more civil.
On the other hand, as I've said before, I think the level of competition on the forum has decreased significantly over the past few months and the level of civility has increased.
How sad.
It's just an internet forum (i.e., an anonymous group of people playing all sorts of different games for all sorts of different reasons). Occassionally, someone writes something worth reading.
Putting aside the merely rhetorical tactics that folk use, I'd say there is a largely unrecognised issue of logical structure in play.
And that is that the laws of thought that work for arguing over particulars are different from the dialectical laws for arguing over the metaphysically general.
So the laws of thought require an answer to be right or wrong in the fashion of the law of the excluded middle. Everyone understands that there has to be a winner and a loser, a truth and a falsity, when it comes to a question over some particular individual fact. The LEM says your choices are limited to either/or.
But arriving at generality - which is the usual goal of any metaphysically-tinged debate - should logically result in the and/also outcome that is a dichotomy, some mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive pair of correct ideas. The dialectical result is two formally complementary truths. When folk end up arguing diametrically opposed positions, that is a good result for the debate - if they can realise that by going at each other in Socratic fashion, they have laid bare the division that can then generally ground all consequent acts of individuation or particularisation.
We are familiar with all the traditional metaphysical dichotomies that dialectical philosophy almost immediately threw up, and which became the basis of modern rational thought.
Particular~general, for a start. Or flux~stasis, discrete~continuous, part~whole, one~many, matter~form, chance~necessity, atom~void, local~global, action~direction, potential~actual, mind~body, signal~noise, freedom~constraint ... the list really does go on and on.
So chances are, where people feel adamant that they are right about something in a general fashion, it is because they have seized on one pole of a polarity.
Is reality fundamentally something continuous or is it fundamentally discrete? A really convincing case can be made for either of those positions. And the LEM seems to rule already that only one particular answer could be right - the other is automatically false. But if the concepts of discrete and continuous are perfectly matched in this complementary fashion, then now we have the happy outcome that is the deeply useful fact of a metaphysical dichotomy.
Somehow both these answers must be true as the ultimate bounds on existence. They become the thesis and antithesis out of which the synthesis - in terms of a world of individuated particulars - can then appear.
So the LEM is a logical structure that fosters the expectation that any decent argument is going to reduce all possibilities to some single correct answer. It is either/or.
But larger than the LEM is the dialectic. That is how you arrive at the space of possibilities, the space of individuated particulars, to which the LEM could apply. And so dialectical reasoning is expansionary. It points you from the symmetry breaking that is a dichotomy towards the holism of a triadic or hierarchical generality. The resolution that is a synthesis. You have two bounding extremes and now all the possible balances that lie in-between.
So people get passionate because in any decent philosophical argument, the most completely opposed alternatives are the ones that are going to feel the rightest. Violent disagreement is the way to get progress - so long as there is then the follow-up of the synthesis that unites those opposites in a generally sensible way.
Just a quick clarification. Seems like you're being a dick, but I wouldn't want to accuse you of being a dick if you aren't being a dick.
Glad you mentioned the LEM, because after posting I thought of a similar issue.
Many decades ago Michael Dummett noticed an uncanny similarity between lots of standard philosophical debates. He recognized the same moves as in the realism/anti-realism debate and suggested that many people were in effect having that same debate but within a restricted domain. Point being that the realists will assume that the LEM applies and the (local) anti-realists have often stumbled, because they don't recognize that they need to deny this. They feel boxed into true-or-false for propositions they really ought to say 'neither' for if they're to be consistent.
Note that the realists were just doing their thing -- applying the LEM is just part of their story, but it also functioned as an I WIN card without them intending or recognizing it.
I think philosophers (and maybe even ordinary folks) tend to be more sophisticated about that now than they were fifty years ago, but I think there's evidence around us of similar issues.
I'm not sure exactly what Roth meant. Part of it might have been the "proving a negative" thing. Part of it was probably also that defending someone accused of anti-Semitism would open you to at least a suspicion of being likewise anti-Semitic, and that makes your defense suspect and self-serving.
My best guess is that Roth saw something that's more sinister, in a way. Mounting any defense is agreeing to debate the claim that Philip Roth is, among other things, anti-Semitic, to look at evidence for and against the proposition, etc., and that's agreeing to treat the claim as something that might be true, might be false. But no! There's no reason to allow this claim into the category of "might be true". So that's one sense in which defending would be losing.
Roth knows how to play this game. And it's not what you think.
?
Pete Unger makes a similar point, although not with your terminology. Philosophical arguments are held to win if and only if no counter-example can be thought of in any possible world, but this is an impossible standard to meet because the field of "all that can happen in any possible world" is too large, possibly infinitely large. Thus philosophical debates become pointlessly amaranthine. I'm not sure if this counts as the proponent of a philosophical proposition playing a losing game, or their opponent playing a winning one. I'm inclined to see it as neither, but that third option you offer which is that neither realises the nature of the game.
Even if, as in academic philosophy, the debate is constrained by some accepted axioms, say two naturalist philosophers will debate about the role of reductionism, or two Kantians might argue about the extent to which capital punishment is implied by the CI, if possible world counter-examples are genuinely infinite, the tight bounding of the field will make no difference, infinity divided by anything is still infinity.
I think it comes down to the muddle people have about the purpose of philosophy. People treat it simultaneously as a series of problems with more or less 'right' solutions, and as an exercise in rhetoric where the careful and deliberate obfuscation of terms can be used to make your solution seem right no matter what.
As I've mentioned before (ad nauseum?), the only way out of this is to ditch the idea of philosophy as a method of seeking 'truth', and come to terms with it's role as therapy. Instead of opponents in a debate, you have complimentary options, rational people will choose one of the options which makes most sense (in the classic use of the term), irrational people might choose some crazy world-view which is completely incoherent, but as Mark Twain (probably) said, one can hardly expect to use rational argument to disabuse someone of a notion that was never rationally arrived at in the first place.
How civil of you (that's what anonymity does). Would your reply have been different if a face-to-face encounter between us was a real possibility?
To clarify: I would maintain in a face-to-face encounter between us that it is sad that your self-definition, -image, -esteem is dependent upon the posts in an internet forum.
Hopefully I have helped you to test your idea(s) and your self (your stated purpose for participating in this forum). But in case I haven't, we are done playing this game.
I think nine times of out ten, sides of a debate are not ‘wrong’; it’s much worse: they are ‘not even wrong’; the game itself is broken from the very beginning: the set of possible moves needs to itself be rejigged. Worthiness, not error; value, not fault: that's the criteria of games.
I think you are wrong. Can you give an example of this? Presumably you mean more than just misunderstandings caused by different implicit assumptions concepts and definitions - that's just the normal stuff of debate that often takes a while to explicate.
I hope you are wrong, because this kind of attitude drives me up the wall. Apo does it. Mars Man did it. (There are others I disagreed with like Death Monkey and Reincarnated who didn't do it.) "I won't engage with what you are trying to say until you adopt my vocabulary, concepts, rules, definitions. Of course, when you these things you will naturally see the light anyway and our disagreement will dissolve."
It makes debate about power rather than ideas and truth. It's who can seize the rule book first. "No! It's my debate, not yours. We do it MY way!"
Who said it's about debate to begin with? Debate has never been situated on the side of truth: the very etymology of de-bate stems from contest and agonism - in other words, power: (dis-battuere 'reversal+fight/beat/batter'). No debate-team ever consoled themselves after losing that they were 'right'. Debate is alien to truth and always has been. The whole point is that one explores ideas and only ideas: that one is not shackled to - a losing game. That's intellectual debilitation through and through.
I'm not that civil. Are you big enough to beat me up?
Quoting Galuchat
I knew what you meant. So, you seriously think that me calling you a name is worse than you condescendingly insulting me because I take the forum seriously? Civility? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it does.
Quoting Galuchat
Actually, yes, it has helped.
I've grown to understand that pragmatism is what your reffering to when it comes down to assessing the utility of various beliefs. No?
Yes, Pragmatism is a pretty wide term (especially if you include neopragmatism) but basically it's the epistemological approach I subscribe to.
Hiya Galuchat!
It really isn't "sad" at all. Quite the opposite in fact. I believe if you are truly here, practicing the discipline of philosophy, there is an endless amount we can learn about ourselves and those around us.
To me what is "sad" is that you have been a member here at TPF for a year and yet only find someone "occasionally writes something worth reading". My feeling is that in life, you get out what you put in and TPF is a slice of life, a glimpse of another's perspective and that to me is valuable. But what is priceless is the genuineness that each member offers, whether I agree with them or not. Oh and one more thing and I will be on my way, overtime you might find out that those you disagree with today, you agree with tomorrow.
Happy Trails
Fact is: nobody is truly (or genuinely) here. Hello! It's an internet forum; where usually the only thing you learn from other members is:
1) Who they want you to think they are, and
2) What kind of games they like to play under a cloak of anonymity.
For example, you seem to be very much into playing a Mommy game with me now, a hostess game with newcomers at other times, and a dispenser of awards for politically correct posts at other times.
Hey! Whatever floats your boat, but don't kid yourself into thinking any of that has anything to do with practising the discipline of philosophy.
As for your reply: I found it amusing, but definitely not worth reading.
Take a Hike.
Interesting demonstration, eh? Next...
I don't get it. You clearly know that what you write will hurt people. You clearly do it for just that purpose. What's in it for you? What do you get out of it?
(Complication for me is that I'd like to understand what connects the two domains, and I suspect the laws of argument emerge from the laws of arguing -- but that's not what I'm after here.)
Imagine my surprise when some contributors don't even bother with a pretense of logical argument, but go straight for the psychodrama.
If you want to talk about deception at the level of language games, that could be interesting and instructive.
But foundational to that is deception at the level of narrative control. And that is the purpose of social media: narrative control, not philosophy.
Dude, I really feel sorry for you if you don't genuinely know anyone on the Internet. However that doesn't change the genuine relationships that I have between myself and others on the Internet. Cloaks of anonymity are often removed with honesty and being genuine.
Quoting Galuchat
Well I be damned! You just listed off the skills I genuinely use in my life outside of the Internet! Those skills are called "caring" about people other than ourselves. I have a tendency to do that for other people regardless if I have something to gain from them or not. Unconditional love maybe? Genuine kindness? Absolutely.
Quoting Galuchat
Hey thanks for issuing me permission of free will! One thing I learned is to look at who is making the judgement of me before putting an ounce of weight behind it.
Quoting Galuchat
Then don't bother reading me. We have an ignore function but it takes free will to utilize. :up:
And this is different from "real life" (or whatever you want to call it)... how?
This is such a last-century attitude towards communication on the Internet! For some reason it is taken as something less than real, something that cannot be taken seriously on pain of being mercilessly ridiculed by some dick. I could never really understand this. If you cannot see my face, or if you don't know my legal name, or if the interaction is mediated via digital rather than analog channels, then it is all so different? Why?
Or is your position that unless an interaction can result in physical violence, it cannot be taken seriously?
If your objective is to communicate that the emporer wears no clothes, you will be insulting possibly, but your comments will be ignored if you make them so vulgarly that no one one takes them seriously. The opposite can be true too, where someone recites bullshit so eloquently that it's taken seriously when it shouldn't be.
Good questions, and relevant to the OP, because they address communication in the context of an internet forum.
The biggest difference between digital communication using internet media and analog (e.g., face-to-face) communication is that approximately 65% of all communication is nonverbal, as opposed to verbal (Birdwhistell, 1974). Of the remaining 35%, much is simultaneous nonverbal and verbal communication with nonverbal and verbal elements reinforcing, complementing, emphasising, contradicting, substituting, and regulating each other (Ekman, 1965).
Unless all communication on an internet forum is conducted using video, a significant amount of information is not transmitted. The result is virtual relationships, not personal relationships.
The Japanese are apparently susceptible to replacing personal relationships with virtual relationships. For example, committing suicide when un-friended, or un-liked. Or withdrawing from participation and suffering a loss of self-esteem, or nervous breakdown, when they discover they hold a minority opinion. The enforcement of conformity is a significant social force which can be enacted in top-down and/or bottom-up fashion.
Apparently, young Japanese males prefer to cultivate virtual relationships with "female" animations, rather than personal relationships with female human beings. This is setting their society up for collapse due to declining marriage and birth rates. Perhaps my information is dated. If so, how has Japan rectified this problem?
Also, Emmanuel Levinas refers to the importance of face-to-face encounters in establishing moral responsibility.
"I" am here. Some people may project a prettified image of themselves, but most people "here" don't, as far as I can tell. Pretty much I operate on a "what you see is what you get" basis, whether here or face-to-face.
Yes, the format provides a cloak of anonymity. Two things: the "cloaking feature" fades over time, over many interactions. "Real people" emerge from anonymity after a time. Some people here have been interacting for 10 years. The anonymity feature protects forum users from the ill-intentioned visitor, or the snoop. True, we don't list our actual names, addresses, telephone numbers, places of employment, and so forth. But if Tiff or T. Clark wanted to visit me, I'd hand over the information to them.
I mean, Tiff and T. Clark in person would have to be less of a risk than the hundred guys I brought home from the bar (one at a time) after the briefest of introductions.
There are all sorts of people playing various games in the world, and on the Internet. You might be playing a game here as well. I wonder what your game is.
This only follows if you do not adapt your verbal style to the medium you are using. The studies you cite in the previous paragraph only show that there are verbal shortcuts available when you can rely on other channels carrying the rest of the signal. (Trivial example for clarity: I can't point at things here as I might IRL so I have to substitute a description.)
What's more, I'd expect that a certain amount (I don't know how much) of the information I'm not getting by having a purely verbal exchange with you is information I'm not interested in when I'm on this forum. Your ideas are all I'm interested in. I'm not trying to get to know you as a person.
I will plead nolo contendere to a charge of misdemeanor hypocrisy. I like to talk about civility but I also like to call people names sometimes. I usually feel bad about it later, but if feels so good when I'm doing it.
In regard to @Galuchat, he sets out to show contempt for people with the intent to hurt them for his own what, enjoyment? Did you read the things he wrote about Tiff? Disgusting. He deserves a rhetorical slap-down.
As for "handling criticism maturely" it shouldn't surprise you to find out that, after the things you have said to me and about me over the past few weeks, I don't give your criticism much credibility.
Sounds like yet another irrelevant ad hom.
Since a philosophical discussion is a conversation like any other, there are of course norms in play that aren't specifically philosophical. What I'm interested in are those cases where one can be mistaken for the other.
This is roughly the debate over ordinary language philosophy, or one version of it, or one perception of one version of it, etc. It goes like this:
A: In normal circumstances, it makes no sense to say 'I know that's a tree'.
B: In normal circumstances, it may be inappropriate to say 'I know that's a tree', but it may nevertheless be true.
This spirals off into a debate about meaning, because both sides know what they're about.
But watch how which side is which can flip:
A: I'm not going to debate this. I am not anti-Semitic.
B: Then you admit you might be.
A: No I don't.
B: But it can only make sense to say "Roth isn't anti-Semitic" if it also makes sense to say "Roth is anti-Semitic."
A now seems to have a choice between admitting that he might be anti-Semitic or admitting that he cannot claim to know he's not. He appears to be playing a losing game.
First of all, it wasn't an ad hominem attack at all. Ad hominem means an attack against an irrelevant personal characteristic for the specific purpose of undermining an argument. I didn't say anything negative about you at all. I only attacked the credibility of your criticism. Even what I said about Galuchat wasn't ad hominem, it was an insult. Carleton once set me straight on the difference.
Also, my comment is clearly relevant. You criticized me and I said I don't find your criticism credible.
Not usually irrelevant. And it's not always a fallacy.
What interests me is that the two choices presented don't come out of the same box at all.
Worth some discussion, but probably not here. It doesn't change the fact that what I said about Hanover's criticism was not an ad hominem attack.
From Wikipedia:
Ad hominem (Latin for "to the man" or "to the person"[1]), short for argumentum ad hominem, is a fallacious argumentative strategy whereby genuine discussion of the topic at hand is avoided by instead attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.
I still don't see how this applies to what I wrote.
For example, should you reject the above because you find me not credible, that'd be ad hom. If I tell you you're immature based upon agreed upon facts and you reject it as coming from me, that'd be ad hom.
The natural next step around here is usually to say something like, "The question 'Do I know that's a tree?' is wrongheaded." The problem with that is that unless you can reframe the issues in a really compelling way, you'll be taken simply as dodging the question because your position is untenable. As if you're trying to change the rules of chess because you're about to be checkmated.
Here's what I wrote:
Quoting T Clark
I said your criticism of me is not credible, not that you aren't. If you want to redefine "ad hominem argument" as "something I don't like," there's not much more to say.
And wiki should change their entry. It's not always fallacious. Sometimes we do downgrade credibility basked on who a person is: known pathological liar, for instance.
If losing is judged based on something as superficial as emotional reaction, then yes, he appears to be playing a losing game. He would be at risk of sending the wrong message.
But if admitting that he might be antisemitic is like admitting that he might be a Martian, then, in that sense, it's trivial.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulverism
Quoting frank
It's not a question of credibility; philosophically speaking, arguments have to be addressed on their own merits. Any focus on the origin of the argument as opposed to the argument itself is considered irrelevant, and so fallacious as a counterargument. For example, to dismiss something Trump says as false simply on the basis that he's a pathological liar is fallacious even if it's understandable.
Did you hear what that naughty boy said about the Emperor and his new clothes? Disgusting. He deserves a rhetorical slap-down.
These are all good points, and of course, I agree, there are important differences between in-person communication and other forms. But such differences do not warrant totally discounting and disparaging communication on the internet as being of no value or importance. Also, it should be noted that internet communication is no different in this respect from old-fashioned letters or print publications. Talking on the phone features more non-verbal signaling than writing, but less than talking face-to-face.
Quoting Bitter Crank
The anonymity of Internet forums is much exaggerated. So, you don't know my legal name. It's not like you know legal names of everyone you interact with face-to-face. And why is it important anyway? Does it matter to you whether you discuss free will or Aristotelian metaphysics with a John Doe or a Joe Q. Public?
And other than their legal names and appearances, forum members are not all that anonymous, as BC notes - in some ways they are less anonymous than people you know in "real life." Just as you recognize people by their appearance or voice every time you meet them, here you can always recognize them by their handles. And in all cases your impression of other people is formed by successive interactions with them. But whereas in other contexts you have to rely on your often faulty memory, here the complete record of everything anyone ever said is permanently on display! How is that for anonymity?
The main thing that makes Internet and other written communication more anonymous and impersonal is the absence of audio-visual impressions, which are important in themselves, and which I think make it easier to form and retain the impression of a person than just a name.
To dismiss Trump's argument on the basis of his character would be a fallacy. But since Trump doesn't present arguments, that is rather a moot point. On the other hand, when Trump simply asserts something as true or false, you can reasonably and confidently dismiss that.
I appreciate that and feel the same way. Although the big risk with me is that I'm not nearly as charming in person.
No, the fallacy is the argument itself; in this case of the form: Trump made an assertion therefore the assertion is false.
But, yes, all the assertions are false. :p
That would not be a fallacy of reasoning, assuming my assessment of Trump's character as a liar and bullshitter is correct.
Trump being a bullshitter and liar doesn't preclude him from making assertions that are true. The argument in the form I presented it is fallacious.
In a courtroom, the testimony of a witness may be painted as suspect because of who the witness is. That can be called an ad hom attack, and it may be reasonable to doubt the witness for the reason given.
If you want to exclude that kind of thing as ad hom you would need to stipulate that.
Quoting Sapientia
"Sending the wrong message" is not just a matter of emotional reactions.
But that is not the only issue here. What is the status of Philip Roth's belief that he is not anti-Semitic? Is it right to call this a belief at all, something that could be veridical or not? Is it something he learned by gathering evidence and comparing hypotheses? What if his saying this is a direct report to be treated the way we would treat "I'm in pain." We're rightly not sure whether to call this knowledge at all, but people do resort to this sort of language because what else is there?
I would guess that a survey would show that the vast majority of people on this site, if asked, "Have you stopped beating your significant other?" would like to answer "C. I have not because I never started, and I would have to have started to stop." "No" doesn't logically entail that you are still beating your SO, but the implication is not just a matter of emotional reaction. (Don't forget that "No" could also be selected because it is true full-stop.)
That's a red herring. Another informal fallacy.
This is what I said:
"For example, to dismiss something Trump says as false simply on the basis that he's a pathological liar is fallacious even if it's understandable."
"No, the fallacy is the argument itself; in this case of the form: Trump made an assertion therefore the assertion is false."
"Trump being a bullshitter and liar doesn't preclude him from making assertions that are true."
Agree or disagree? If you disagree, why?
If Trump tells you he's more popular than Obama because he got more votes than Obama, and you reject that argument because you disbelieve his statement of the facts because he's known to misstate facts, that's not a fallacy. If, though, you reject the argument because you don't believe vote tally determines popularity because Trump said it, that'd be an ad hom.
Ad hom as to facts is ok. Ad hom as to reasoning not.
Trump says X and Trump usually lies about X therefore X is false is fallacious regardless of what X is.
Trump says X and Trump usually lies about X therefore X is probably false isn't.
Same thing:
What I said: The IDF said X and the IDF usually/often lie about X therefore X is probably/might be false (isn't fallacious).
What I didn't say: The IDF said X and the IDF usually/often lie about X therefore X is false (would be fallacious).
You committed the "I didn't read what you wrote" fallacy.
Throwing shade on a drug addict in a courtroom can be called an ad hom attack. The objective of the attack is not to prove that any particular statement is false, but to create doubt. And it may be that doubt is perfectly reasonable.
Note the difference between arguing that you're wrong vs arguing that it's reasonable to doubt you.
? That obviously fits with what I said.
And:
My dog usually barks on Wednesday. It is Wednesday. Therefore my dog is likely to bark. That's not fallacious.
Yes. I know.
If you agree, great, we're done, Frank. If you disagree with something, let me know.
Who is?
If that damn dog doesn't stop barking every Wednesday, it's going to have an unfortunate accident.
I never said it was.
It's a belief if that's what he believes, and if he says that he's not antisemitic, or if he says that he's in pain, then it would make sense to give him the benefit of the doubt by assuming that he believes what he says, unless we have good enough reason to do otherwise.
Loaded questions are questions worded in such a way as to be suggestive, and they force more astute responders to give a carefully worded answer.
Send him to my place, I'll sort him out. :up:
Ok. Wiki actually does explain the view that ad hom is not always a fallacy. It provides two opinions to that effect.
When I say disagree, I mean as in quote one of my statements and then disagree with it.
Quoting Baden
i.e. to say the original point of contention wasn't an ad hom.
1) It's fallacious to dismiss an argument on the basis of its origin.
2) It's also fallacious to dismiss an assertion/statement of fact (completely) on the basis of its origin.
3) It's not however fallacious to question the credibility of an assertion on the basis of its origin.
The first two would be fallacies of irrelevance. Which fallacy of irrelevance would depend on how the dismissal is phrased. It seemed like Hanover was trying to make an argument, so I thought @T Clark had probably committed a Bulverism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulverism
"One accuses an argument of being wrong on the basis of the arguer's identity or motive, but these are strictly speaking irrelevant to the argument's validity or truth."
And I just said that mostly as an aside without trying to get in between the two of them.
I think your notion of an ad hom is just too narrow.
Well, it's not a big deal, I suppose. I wouldn't trust a word that comes out of Hanover's mouth anyhow. (Unless he's talking about Sapientia's mother).
But since this thread has morphed into “What the heck IS an Ad Hom?”, I’d like to go out on a limb here and say that the fallacy is not even relevant here. Let us review, shall we:
Quoting T Clark
Then Han’s response about the alledged ad hom:
As for "handling criticism maturely" it shouldn't surprise you to find out that, after the things you have said to me and about me over the past few weeks, I don't give your criticism much credibility.
— T Clark
Sounds like yet another irrelevant ad hom.
- Hanover
I propose that TC’s comment, the alleged ad hominem fallacy, was NOT part of any logical argument, and qualifies more as an opinion or preference, rather than some point of debate. Even though it was about a person, rather than a food preference or political opinion or something. So in TC’s own mind, he doesn’t trust Han’s credibility, and states that. Opinion and personal preference.
If that is unconvincing, and an ad hom is even possible here, it is probably the equivalent of a ticky-tack foul in sports, barely meeting the definition of even a character reference, let alone a character attack. Merely a response in kind. And definitely not an example of name-calling.
Verdict: throw the case out. (But continue with this discussion of fallacies. Very educational.)
:up:
Philosophers deploy the power of persuasion in a variety of ways including explicitly accusing any opposition of some terrible crime like mysticism or insignificance.
I was thinking of starting up a thread with just that as the subject - The Logical Fallacy Fallacy questioning the value of the idea of logical fallacies. Although the so called Ad Hominem Fallacy is the most misused in my experience, all the others are pretty lame too.
An ad hom is an informal fallacy though:
"In contrast to a formal fallacy, an informal fallacy originates in a reasoning error other than a flaw in the logical form of the argument."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy#Informal_fallacy
Might be an interesting discussion. :)
Also we've veered pretty far off-topic here. Should leave this discussion for the more general issue of failed communication.
Yes, it wasn't a biggie. Agree there.
Exactly. However, my (very convoluted) point was that it was neither a reasoning error, nor a valid reason. It was more of an aside, a personal opinion. Not that one can use that loophole to sneak in garbage. But the response was so tame that is not the case. Good point, though.
But, yea... we are way off the turnpike, if the OP wants to guide us... :monkey:
:up:
Here's how I understand your view of (philosophical) discussion:
1. There's the plain language of what people say. Logic has a place here, and truth.
2. There's how people react to what people say, and that might be colored by emotional reactions, misinterpretation, etc., none of which has anything to do with logic and truth.
The very model of philosophy for you is saying the emperor has no clothes, speaking the unfiltered truth and if people find that impolitic or impolite or if they misinterpret it, that's on them. Have I gotten this wrong?
In my view, this view is cripplingly simplistic. There are layers between (1) and (2), and everything I've written relies on that fact.
Here's a quickish first response, but figuring this out was the whole point of the thread! (It's not all perfectly clear to me -- just pursuing a hunch, as I've said.)
For an argument that there is such a layer, here's an intro to implicature.
A: Should we go for a hike later today?
B: It's supposed to rain.
The plain language of B's response is a non sequitur, but we know, or rather we presume, that it isn't. How does that work?
If A assumes that B is following the principle of cooperation, then A can work out that B probably means that if it's going to rain then we shouldn't go hiking and it's going to rain therefore no, we shouldn't go.
There's nothing here about emotional reaction. There's also nothing here about interpretation: "It's supposed to rain" means exactly what it appears to. It does not, for instance, mean "No" in this particular case, even though B means "No" by saying "It's supposed to rain."
There's some logic here, but "It's supposed to rain" does not on its own logically entail that we shouldn't go hiking, and that's why there's room to cancel the implicature: "It's supposed to rain -- but let's go anyway." But if B does not want his response to be taken as "No", then he has to cancel the implicature. If he just says "It's supposed to rain", it will be taken as "No". Logic alone does not get you here: you have first to assume that B's response, which appears to be a non sequitur, is not.
So this is one of those layers. There are principles, rules, conventions that we rely on in using language that are neither just logical, dealing only with the plain language of what is said, nor extra-linguistic like emotional reactions.
There are a couple of ways this shows up in doing philosophy. One is that philosophy, being an almost exclusively verbal activity, depends on such conventions of language use. We try to bring everything out into the open and rely on logic and plain language as much as possible, but there may be limits to that or there may be things we miss. (Will come back to this.) Another issue is that to evaluate a position, we often turn to verbal evidence of one sort or another -- "If you're right then it would make sense to say ..." Gotta be careful there, because our intuitions about "what it makes sense to say" are not based only in logic and plain language but also in these other conventions about how we use language.
Example of the latter. Austin claims that in normal circumstances it makes no sense to say either "He sat in the chair voluntarily" or "He sat in the chair involuntarily" -- only in special circumstances would we reach for those adverbs. He's sidling up to the issue of free will, but note this is also an implicit rebuke of the way philosophers use the law of the excluded middle. You might feel compelled to say that one of these sentences must be true and the other false. What's uncomfortable here is that either way you'll be opting for a sentence whose plain language you're cool with, but whose ordinary use carries baggage you don't want. You'll have to reject something.
Which gets us back to our other issue, I think. How do you justify your choice of what to reject? What kind of justification do you have to give? A question like "Have you stopped beating your significant other?" isn't a loaded question in the sense that it only pretends to offer a choice but only one answer is okay; it carries a presupposition. If you can figure out the presupposition -- easy to do in this case, but not always -- you can deny that, but that means refusing to answer simply "yes" or "no".
I think there's some other stuff going on in philosophical discussion too. I should answer your questions about my position, but it's easy to come up with a question a philosopher won't want to answer (because of what it presupposes, for instance). But I'm also supposed to convince you, by meeting some unspecified standard of yours, not mine, and that standard might not be simply logical but include, say, answering your questions. Much of this sort of discussion has to flicker between figuring out what the words themselves mean and entail, etc., and what you mean by saying them, so we bounce between layers of conventions a lot. Getting clearer about that was my goal in this thread.