B8005-4 Arguments: Assumptions

“Arguments follow from assumptions, and assumptions follow from beliefs, and very rarely - perhaps never - do beliefs reflect an agenda determined entirely by facts” (David Berlinski. The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions. New York: Crown Forum, 2008, pp. 103-104).

ARGUMENTS FOLLOW FROM ASSUMPTIONS: Of course, this is an incorrect statement. Arguments follow from disagreements, where one of the parties refuses to accept certain assumptions made by the other party of the disagreement. What the two parties argue about, basically, are the assumptions themselves. Did Wittgenstein not say that arguments cease once adequate definitions are made? It would seem, then, that the first requirement of any disagreement would be to clarify the meaning of the assumptions being used.

ASSUMPTIONS FOLLOW FROM BELIEFS: Again, this is an incorrect statement. Assumptions may follow from beliefs. But more often, assumptions are applications of current opinion to contemporary arguments. That is to say, sometimes assumptions are nothing more than clichés stated by one of the parties without regard to reasoned thought or to an opinion formed from examined beliefs. For example, people often say "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer." Such a statement more often reflects the extent to which propaganda has been effective in the lives of the public than it does from a conclusion drawn from proper examination.

BELIEFS ARE NOT FACTUALLY SUPPORTED: While I tend to agree with this statement at some overall level of understanding, I also assert that facts themselves are trivial. A true fact does not support a belief. Rather, it makes a tautological statement about the world. But in a very general way, the things that people assert tend never to be based on examined facts. It might be more correct to say that people express their beliefs on the basis of selected facts, or on particular facts culled from a vast assortment of available facts. In other words, beliefs are often based on peculiar and nuanced selections of facts.

CONTRIVED REASONING: In spite of the difficulties that Berlinski has laid out here, I think he is particularly correct about modern science in its pretense that its positions and conclusions are based on "facts" alone; and, in contradistinction to religious belief, that scientific assertions are always based on evidence rather than on beliefs. Almost always, science has no genuine evidentiary basis. Instead, it possesses something that I will call a contrived reason that supports a particular notion.

B8005-3 Arguments: Clarification of Facts

THE CLARIFICATION OF FACTS: We could say that some arguments serve to clarify definitions, where ambiguity exists, by positing compelling, factual information, that effectively destroys the competing claim. To “win” this sort of an argument, thus, is to furnish decisive facts to another person. Illustration: a First Grade teacher had a particularly disruptive child in her classroom. She told the child to sit down - repeatedly. But the child refused. So the teacher flipped on the video recorder that had been installed in her classroom and she recorded the antics of the disruptive boy. Later, she called the parents of the boy and asked them to come to the school for a Parent/Teacher conference. The parents came, and when they were told about the disruptive behavior of their son, they vigorously denied that “their child would ever do anything like that.” Rather than listen to a series of anecdotal narratives about the relative saintliness of their child, the teacher asked the parents to watch a short video tape, as she turned on the video recording system. She told the parents she wanted to show them something before they made their counterarguments. When she played the tape of the child’s previous classroom behavior, the overwhelming evidence seen on the tape could not be refuted by the parents. The “facts” were just too compelling. The parents told the teacher that they would talk to the child and that they “would straighten everything out.” The next day the youngster showed up in the classroom with two black eyes and other marks on his face that indicated that the parents had, indeed, “talked” to the boy - by “hand.” The child sat in his chair, never said a single word, and never ventured out of his seat the entire day. He was a perfect angel.