My position within this debate is as a newly minted assistant professor within a field called rhetoric and writing, composition studies, or rhetoric and composition (it’s the humanities, so we can’t just pick one name ;-). My field, if it has any cohesion at all, is centered on questions surrounding how people use various forms of writing, from academic genres to digital and community-based ones, for rhetorical purposes, or to invent, create, persuade, and make meaning. Usually there’s an ‘in the’ or ‘as a’ somewhere in there, too: in the classroom, in the local community, as a person of a certain race, gender, social class, sexuality, cultural heritage, etc. Perhaps it’s best understood as a cross between English studies and sociology, come to think of it: people try to teach, research, and perform writing and rhetoric within various social contexts.

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6:20 pm  •  16 July 2011  •  13 notes  •  View comments

• Harpo Marx
• Chico Marx
• Bill Bailey
• Others?

1. Music can certainly make people cry, when played in the right way, with the right performer it can make people laugh too. When it does these things, is it being used as a tool for the performer to connect with the audience and make emotions rise in them, or is it the music itself that makes emotions rise?
2. Both music and comedy rely on the understanding and the practical comprehension and use of patterns. To make a hall of people laugh you have to understand why people laugh. To make music that a hall of people can appreciate and enjoy you have to understand the patterns of sound vibrations, a practical understanding that allows you to play the right notes, that make music. Both necessitate an understanding of patterns; if these patterns are at all similar then understanding of one could mean the understanding of the other comes more easily.
3. Perhaps the link between the two does not lie in similarities between musical patterns and patterns that exist in jokes, but in similarities between the way people enjoy music and the way people laugh. Perhaps, instead of an understanding of mathematical patterns in music and humour, the link is an understanding of people, and what makes them react in certain ways (e.g. musical appreciation and laughter). After all, one of the things that music and humour share is that they both exist for humans to appreciate, or at least to consume.
4. Maybe people like the Marx Brothers and Bill Bailey just have an innate, in-depth and rare understanding of human minds.
5. Of course, since everything is based in mathematics, there is a mathematical explanation for this, just like there is for everything. Bill Bailey understands, innately, mathematical patterns I could not begin to comprehend consciously, that allow him to make such great music and make so many people laugh.

4:34 pm  •  7 July 2011  •  2 notes  •  View comments

ginnanator:

The big story over the past few weeks has been New York state honoring marriage between a person and a person (basically gender neutral). This was seen as victory for the gay marriage movement.

Underneath the wash of celebrating “equality” and perjoratives about the opposing side is a debate…

This annoyed me, because I’m easily annoyed by logic that seems wrong to me, so I’m going to run a comprehensive criticism of it. Isn’t emotion a great motivator?

(please note: this is being criticised for invalid arguments and things like that; my opinion on the subject is unimportant and is an uninformed opinion regardless. This, like everything on here, is about the logic)

Underneath the wash of celebrating “equality” and perjoratives about the opposing side is a debate that needs to be flushed outside of emotion, dogma, and drama. I have become very frustrated with the gay marriage debate because both sides have presented arguments that are lack luster, if not, only obscene and immature.

I assume from this opening that the writer is going to do away with one-sided debate, emotion and manipulative rhetorical devices and approach the issue in a refreshingly rational and balanced fashion, each argument analysed fairly and no over-reaching conclusions or fallacies, as far as the writer is able. As a reminder though, I would say that to do this well and to be unfailingly consistent in it is next to impossible even for those very skilled in logical argument and debate; it is so very easy to lapse into rhetoric when that is what we hear every day. Let’s see if the author manages the difficult task ahead.

Below are my thoughts on the debate. I will write two posts. This one is on arguments for gay marriage.

You might think, as I did, from “arguments for gay marriage” that the author is going to argue for the side of gay marriage in this post, and against it in the next. Instead the arguments are summarised and then argued against. I make no comment on this choice but simply note it. Now begins the article proper.

Reasoning for Gay Marraige

I’m only going to mention this once and not every time it comes up and, I promise, I will not do it in a superior, ‘I never spell a word wrong’ way. This is the internet, it’s fine to spell things wrong, nobody cares and for many people english is a second or third language. I only mention it because it detracts from the persuasive power of the argument, and the dignity and persuasiveness of the writer if things are spelled wrong. Before I learnt to check every page for errors every time I wrote anything, nothing I wrote that was meant to be taken seriously would ever be taken as seriously as it could have been. Only a small point, but reading it through before you post it makes a huge difference.

Marriage is be about love … Marriage is definitely a consequence of love. I am not sure anyone would disagree with that; however, marriage is DEFINED but much more than love. The premise that marriage is only about love is false.

I believe this is where the trouble is in this paragraph. The author moves the argument he is criticising so that it has the premise he wants to criticise, when it does not have that premise. This is called the straw-man fallacy. The argument used to support gay marriage is not:

1. Marriage is defined as two people being in love.
2. Love between two men or between two women is possible.
3. Gay marriage should be allowed.

No-one would argue this as it leads to an absurdity. If that were true then people would need no ceremony or legal document to get married, as soon as they were in love they would immediately be married, because being in love and being married would be the same thing. Moreover, the argument does not have as its premise ‘marriage is only about love.’ The argument the author should be criticising in this paragraph is this:

1. Marriage mostly happens because of love.
2. A good reason for people to be married is that they are in love.
3. Men can be in love with other men, and women can be in love with other women, just as men and women can be in love with each other.
4. Therefore gay couples, if they love each other, have good reason to marry.
5. If they have good reason to marry they should be allowed to marry. 
6. Gay couples should be allowed to marry.

(once again, please note: my sole purpose is to assess validity, not to support one viewpoint or another.)

This argument does not attempt to define what marriage should be; the argument only says what a good reason for people marrying is, observes that this good reason applies to homosexual as well as heterosexual couples, and concludes that they should be allowed to marry. The argument that has been criticised, with the premise that ‘marriage is only about love’ is not the argument that should be criticised.

This is an issue of equality … tax benefits should not be awarded to same-sex couples. One reason how easy it is to commit fraud. Most federal and state tax benefits are in place for marriage to encourage child bearing and conslidation of resources. People are happier when they are married. Married couples are also much more productive over time. I might be open to benefits if a gay partnership adopted a child, but that is another discussion to be had.

Argument:

1. Equality is good.
2. More equality is better than less equality.
3. Allowing homosexual couples access to marriage and its benefits creates greater equality.
4. Therefore homosexual couples should be allowed access to marriage and its benefits.

This paragraph wanders from the point and doesn’t answer the assertion: homosexual couples and heterosexual couples should be equal in their legal ability to get married. This assertion invokes a principle. A principle, once invoked, must be argued against, it cannot just be ignored. The words “should” and “ought” in an argument mean that a moral principle has been invoked and if the counter-argument given does not refute this principle or prove that the argument’s conclusion does not follow from it, by, for example, saying that this is not a good moral principle or that it does not apply here, then the counter-argument fails. The author’s counter-argument says that gay couples should not be given equality in marriage because tax benefits are mostly to encourage child bearing and to consolidate resources and because gay marriage would make fraud easier. However, since a principle has been laid down in the argument, the principle must be answered. ‘Equality is good’; the author has to either refute this or prove that the conclusion that gay marriage should be allowed does not follow from this principle. But here the author has argued that equality in marriage for gay couples would not have good consequences (would make fraud easier) and that it would undermine the government’s reason for tax benefits, i.e. child birth and consolidation of resources in families, but the principle (equality is good) and the argument following from it (gay marriage should be allowed because it would give greater equality) have not been answered. This paragraph does not give sufficient counter-arguments for the argument it should be criticising.

The Divorce Rate is already High- Point to bad behavior to support “good” behavior? I am not sure how this is a reasonable argument. Car crashes are one of the leading causes of death in the United States. Do car crashes nullify driving cars?

Valid point; bad example. Car crashes nullifying driving cars is not similar to invoking a high divorce rate as a reason for gay marriage. That would be suitable if those posing the argument were using the high divorce rate as a reason to abolish marriage, rather than for an expansion of marriage. Having said this, the overarching counter-argument is valid.

Get out of the bedroom- This argument also appeals to my liberatiarn side; however, it is a post-hoc argument. If you start out with the presupposition that marriage should not be between a man and woman and the state defined it as such, then it is easy to reach this conclusion

Argument being criticised:

1. It is not the government’s business what goes on in citizen’s bedrooms.
2. The government should not interfere in things that are not its business.
3. Therefore policy and law (e.g. marriage law) should not be based on it.
4. Therefore marriage should be allowed between gay couples.

Criticised thus:

The government will not allow marriage between gay couples because a necessary part of its definition of marriage is that it be between a man and a woman. It is not because the government is interfering in private sexual matters that marriage is not allowed for gay couples, it is because homosexual marriage is impossible under the legal definition. This criticism says that the assumption in the conclusion (1.4) of the above argument that marriage can be instituted between two men or between two women is false, as under its legal definition it can only be instituted between a man and a woman. Under this counter-argument, the legal definition of ‘marriage’ would have to be changed before a law allowing gay marriage could be instituted.

The author says that the argument under criticism is post-hoc (‘post hoc ergo propter hoc’ (after this therefore because of this)), because it assumes that marriage’s legal definition allows for same-sex unions. This is not a post-hoc fallacy. It is arguing from a false assumption, as far as I can tell. I believe this is what the author means. However, the fact that marriage is legally defined to only allow heterosexual marriage does not mean that the argument: ‘same sex marriage should be allowed because the government should not interfere in private sexual matters’ is invalid. If this argument were proved true then the legal definition would simply have to be changed, but that is no bar to the argument’s validity; and it is not post-hoc.

Wont harm existing marriage- I think this argument is moot at best. Its moral standing is based upon utilitarianism. Basically, in this light, morality is based upon harm on to others. I do not think this moral framework is valid. Even so, I have not seen any evidence that gay marriage won’t harm existing marriage. I am open to reading documentation and support. I am open to facts on this argument but the moral framework of this argument is deplorable.

A small note first: ‘moot’ means invalid, as in the conclusion does not follow from the premises, and it is a bad argument. This is the end for an argument, so “moot at best” does not make sense as, for an argument, there is nothing worse than being moot. Just a small thing though.

Second small note, but this one is more important: the author mentions utilitarianism, and then defines it in the next sentence. However, he defines negative utilitarianism, the position that only harm or suffering should be taken into account in calculating the moral worth of an action, and not classical utilitarianism, where pleasure is also taken into account. Negative utilitarianism is a much less respected form of utilitarianism, for good reason. It is a small criticism but an important one, because it is an example of a misrepresentation, intentional or otherwise, of the opponent’s position. If your opponent’s position can be misrepresented to be weaker than it is you can criticise it more easily, and appear to win when you have not in fact won. This is the straw-man fallacy, again. I do not assert that the author intended this, most likely it was unintentional, but it is an important note nevertheless.

The argument criticised here appears to be that legalising gay marriage will not harm existing heterosexual marriage, so why should it be resisted?

Two branches: 1) that no harm will be done so it should not be resisted; it harms no-one, so why should anyone object?

2) if gay marriage was going to lead to harm happening to others then there would be grounds for legitimate objection, but since no harm will be caused then no-one has legitimate grounds, no-one has the right, to object to gay marriage.

The author criticises the first of these two branches of argument as belonging to the utilitarian moral system, and asserts that that system is not valid as well as saying that he has seen no evidence that gay marriage will not harm existing marriage. But the author fails to criticise the second branch, which is based on rights, and based on a deontological ethical system (non-utilitarian). The author simply assumes that only the first branch exists, arguing only against that one. Another significant objection is that the fact the author has seen no evidence that same-sex marriage will not cause harm is no criticism of the argument. It provides no reason to believe that the evidence does not exist, and the problem of proving a negative (proving that gay marriage will not cause harm) is a further objection; it may well be impossible to provide such evidence. As a final criticism, the author gives no reason for utilitarianism being a bad or “deplorable” moral system. Since the author gives a definition of the system I would speculate that he is relying on the reader not being familiar with the utilitarianism, and therefore not in a position to know whether it is a good or bad moral system. The reader would then rely on the author’s opinion of the unfamiliar moral framework, and would go along with the author’s point. If this is true it is a rhetorical device, and bad argument practice, but it is pure, unfounded speculation and should be taken as such.

People are born this way- This is a naturalistic fallacy. I was born with bad vision, should I correct it?

Firstly, comparing being homosexual with having defective vision implies a fallacy of begging the question: it implies that homosexuality is a bad thing, and the conclusion that same-sex marriage should not be allowed follows from that. Unrelated to the validity of the argument, it is also offensive. These two things make it a bad and unwise example to use, especially if the author wishes to appear impartial and disinterested.

Secondly, this criticism suffers from the straw-man fallacy, and is thus invalid – it criticises the wrong argument.

(the following argument is written in the fist person, because it is clearest in that form.)

1. I was born this way.
2. Therefore it cannot be bad that I am homosexual.
3. If it is not bad that I am homosexual, I should be allowed to marry.

This argument does suffer from the naturalistic fallacy, that is quite correct. However, it is not the argument that should be being criticised. This is:

1. Some people are born homosexual, or with the genetic make up that determines they will one day be of that sexual preference.
2. Those people could not help, as they did not choose, to be homosexual.
3. If someone did not choose something for him or herself, they should suffer no penalties because of it, as far as that is possible.
4. Therefore gay people should have the same rights as someone who was born with a different sexual preference, as that person did not choose theirs either.
5. One of those rights is the right to marry.
6. Gay couples should be allowed to marry.

There is a large minority- Until recently, I was willing to entertain this argument; however, recent facts have changed my position. According to a recent Pew Poll, there are an estimated 400,000 gay co-habitating partnerships that exist in the United States. Conservatively, 1% to 3% of the US population is gay. About half of the gay population is in some sort of living partnership. This is reflective of the US population as whole. So then, lets transpose the marriage trends of the rest of the US. About 67% of the millennial generation is married. So about 250,000 gay partnerships would get probably married. As the argument goes, gay marriage advocates want to change marriage for less than 0.1% of the population.

The author focuses here on attacking the factual basis the ‘large minority’ argument is built upon, and not on challenging the validity of using the size of a minority to justify a change in the law. So, my objections will be on the author’s use of statistics. The only flaw in the author’s use as far as I can see occurs in the transposing of marriage trends from the heterosexual population to the homosexual population. There is no reason to suppose that these two figures would be linked, as the two populations are, considered in terms of marriage and the controversial situation and socio-political pressures surrounding that marriage, in very different positions. The figure, 67% for the heterosexual millennial generation, could be far higher, or much lower, for gay couples. There is no way to tell. From this transposing using heterosexual marriage statistics for one generation the numbers that follow it are calculated, and the final conclusion of the paragraph is based on it. The emotive and sarcastic “Wow!” on the end is a perfectly reasonable way to make the point, but it must be noted that the number that is expected to produce the reaction in the reader, 0.1%, is based on a transposing of statistics between two groups, when there is no reason to suppose that these two groups have anything in common that would suggest their likelihood of marriage is similar.

Based on the facts, I came to the conclusion that gay marriage is not a valid policy decision. If we are basing policy on logic and what is reasonable, gay marriage does not past mustard. Then again, this debate has been defined by emotion, not be reasonable arguments.

Small pedantic note: the phrase, easily misheard, often mispronounced and one I had to look up to get right, is “pass muster”, referring to passing army inspection.

Based on the analysis of the counter-arguments given as reasons for this final conclusion, it does not stand up and cannot be held as true or more likely to be true from the arguments given. I look forward to the next post, ‘Arguments Against Gay Marriage’, and hope the fire in the soul of the author, that made this article irresistible as a target for analysis, never goes out.

2:38 am  •  5 July 2011  •  4 notes  •  View comments

“Being capable of thinking effectively about the objects of your environment, you concluded that you can think just as effectively about your own thinking. This error lies at the foundation of your theory of knowledge.”

— GOLEM XIV (Stanislaw Lem)

3:03 pm  •  25 June 2011  •  2 notes  •  View comments

Cultural relativism became popular in the nineteenth century, when the British empire was declining, because it gave a moral reason for Britain’s reduced role in far-away countries and the affairs of colonies. Thus Britain’s reduced international power and influence could be given moral justification and that could then be used as a reason for acting, changing the decline of the empire in people’s minds from an unintentional loss of power and control to an active change done because of a new moral understanding, all by changing the guiding moral system from divine command theory to relativism. It would most likely have become popular among intellectuals in the influential classes and the upper class.

2:23 pm  •  19 June 2011  •  3 notes  •  View comments

1. What is meaning?

2. What is life?

1. Meaning comes from the intentionality of mental states. Conscious thoughts are about something, they have intentionality or ‘aboutness’ and this is where meaning comes from. The thought, “that rock is very round” is about a certain object in space and its properties or, more precisely, about a certain element in perception or memory.
   

   So, if meaning comes from intentionality then without any conscious being there would be no meaning, and no significance to anything. To claim that nothing has any meaning or significance is clearly false as intentionality of a conscious being’s mental states creates meaning.

   This is the nature of meaning: mental states that are about something (‘the hard problem’ in philosophy of mind is the question of how intentionality, mental states and meaning arise from the ‘meat’ of the brain and the physical processes of neurons: ‘mind from meat’)

2. Life is defined as anything that has: i) a border or limits to itself, such as a cell, a membrane or a body, ii) a thing that can take in enough energy from its environment to replenish the energy lost in its processes: a metabolism, and iii) a thing that can reproduce or produce another of itself.

This is the biological definition of life. Whether that definition is useful in this discussion is uncertain at this point.

The problem is: what meaning does life have? What is it that it is about? Conscious beings assign meaning to things, but what meaning is assigned to life? Does the question focus on the significance life has? That may lead some to the conclusion that life has no meaning, because they believe life has no significance. Does the question ask whether life is important or not? Does the question ask what the reason for life existing is? Is the question, ‘what is the meaning of life?’ confined to human life or to all life? Is the answer, as Dr Manhattan says, that life is so unbelievably unlikely, and each instance of an individual being so improbable that it has huge significance? “Like oxygen turning into gold?”

To answer this question I will need to have a greater understanding of the nature of meaning and a wider conception of what is involved in life and what its greater implications are, in order to find out why it might be significant.

For Christians life has meaning because it has the attention and the love of a being that is existence itself and is the whole of the universe: the ultimate reality. Life is significant because it was created by, and is held to be valuable by the most important being in existence. I am a Christian so it is difficult for me to take any other view, but for the sake of finding what life’s meaning is for people who do not share my beliefs, and because there is a chance that life has meaning separate from this, I will try.

If we take the view that all that exists is the physical world and there is no greater consciousness: life is alone in the uncaring gulf of the universe, then what meaning does life have?

I do not believe it has none if this is true, but finding out what that meaning could be, will involve answering these questions.

Do you have any answers? What, for you, is the meaning of life?

2:30 pm  •  18 June 2011  •  8 notes  •  View comments

This is the question I will be working on for the foreseeable future or for however long it takes to find a satisfactory answer. This is seen as a really big problem, and as unsolvable by some people, but I don’t think it’s actually that hard; it just requires working through, and the confidence to accept the conclusion that has been rationally arrived at without accepting too quickly a conclusion that isn’t satisfactorily supported.

I will begin with my own preliminary thoughts. I will then work through answers I have heard others give (with source) and why I think they don’t work, before moving on to an expansion of the question, discussing its nature and its implications, and then hopefully following promising lines of thought, exploring critiques of them, and then arriving at promising conclusions that can be evaluated, before moving towards a final conclusion.

This is a starting layout and the actual process may not reflect this faithfully. Its function is to provide structure.

8:57 am  •  17 June 2011  •  30 notes  •  View comments

The definition of ‘game’ problem, perhaps solved now (though I am yet to be convinced), I stole from Ludwig Wittgenstein, the great polymath and philosopher of language, and used by him it was a mere demonstration, an example for a larger, and more fundamental, argument.

The conclusion Wittgenstein was providing an example to validate was that there are two types of definitions that we use: intuitive and logical. Intuitive, or practical definitions are developed in us through childhood and through experience of repeated correlations between events: the concepts that arise from these correlations allow us to categorise our experience into ‘definitions’, while logical definitions are rationally understood or conceived, and developed from logical inference and deduction, not subconsciously through development, but consciously and rationally.

It is very difficult sometimes to find a definition for a word that we already understand and can practically define, for example we may have difficulty coming up with a watertight logical definition of ‘game’ and yet we can easily recognise both a football match and two people playing scrabble as games, even if we have never seen the activities before. This is because we are attempting to conceive of a logical definition in the first instance, and when we recognise an activity in progress as a game we are using our experience and our practical or intuitive definition.

Please note, this is a recording of relevant thoughts and may not be entirely structurally coherent, nevertheless: is this valid?

2:41 pm  •  13 June 2011  •  3 notes  •  View comments

“A pursuit or activity with agreed rules performed or played either alone or with others. Can be for the purpose of entertainment, or within a competition. Usually the point is to win without any reference to prizes or remuneration of any kind.”

— Within half an hour I come up against this definition, from my own Father.

1:50 pm  •  13 June 2011  •  2 notes  •  View comments

There is no definition of the word ‘game’ that cannot be refuted by giving an example of an activity that is clearly a game but is not covered by the definition.

A pursuit or activity with rules performed either alone or with others, for the purpose of entertainment.

Easy: Grandmaster Chess. Not done for the purpose of entertainment. Clearly a game.

Can you prove me wrong?

1:36 pm  •  13 June 2011  •  4 notes  •  View comments