B8005-6 Arguments: Idiosyncratic Truth

ARGUMENTS: IDIOSYNCRATIC TRUTH:

1. ARGUMENTS WITHOUT OBJECTIVE TRUTH: One should not expect the dialectical format to produce anything resembling objective truth. Instead, the “truths” adopted by the agonists are idiosyncratic expressions of “truth” that each party sees fit to adopt as his very own, rather than some truth objectified by authority, as in (“I’m the parent and I said so!”), or by preponderance of evidence, as in (“The security camera caught you on tape.”). Because the objectified truths are not present, the dialectical argument cannot end immediately, and the parties of the argument can hold onto their idiosyncratic notions of what is “true,” as follows:

a. EXAMPLE: OBJECTIFICATION BY AUTHORITY: A twelve year-old girl asked her mother for ten dollars. When the mother refused to give the money to the child, the girl said, “Why not?” The mother said, “Because I said so.” The child was not satisfied with that response and said the mother had to give her a reason. The mother replied that she didn’t have to give a reason: “I’m the adult here and you’re the child and I say you can’t have the ten dollars. Okay? End of discussion.” The twelve year-old insisted that the mother give her a detailed explanation for her refusal to give her ten dollars. The bickering went on and on until the father, who was sitting nearby, told the child that her mother had told her she couldn’t have the ten dollars and ‘that was it.” The child stood there with her hands on her hips and then stuck her tongue out at her father. The father, seething with anger, jumped off the couch and chased the daughter around the dining room table. The child ran out of the house and didn’t return until some time later, after it became dark outside.
Once the argument was objectified by the father pursuing the child and the child leaving the house, the dialect ended. More significantly, the child was so shocked by the incident that she immediately ceased arguing in later cases when she recognized that “the point of no return” had been reached in the argument, when the father signaled a “time-out” gesture with his hands.

b. EXAMPLE: OBJECTIFICATION BY PREPONDERANCE OF EVIDENCE: Frank used to take barrels of sawdust home with him to be used as bedding for his dogs. Frank’s employer had no objection to his taking the sawdust because it otherwise presented a disposal problem for the employer. And normally Frank would get a co-worker to help him lift the barrel onto his truck. But one night the security guard noticed that the men were using a fork truck to load the barrel on the truck. It seemed strange that something as light as sawdust would require a fork truck. So, the guard came over and asked Frank what he had in the barrel. Frank told him that he had a barrel of sawdust. “Then why do you need a fork truck to load the barrel? You never used a fork truck in the past.” Frank told him that it was “real heavy sawdust.” The guard removed the cover on the barrel and found a shallow layer of sawdust on top of a barrel of carbide cutting tools. The carbide had a scrap metal price of about $5.00 per pound at the time and the barrel contained hundreds of pounds of metal. Inadvertently the guard had caught Frank in an incident of Grand Theft - Felony, because the value of the carbide tooling was about $4,000. Frank was fired on the spot.

2. ARGUMENTS WITHOUT CLOSURE: Moreover, often the dialectical argument cannot end on a decisive note, as in, “Shut up! You’re the kid and I’m the parent and I carry the big stick in this household. Got it? Now, get to bed!” Lacking any clear end point or strategy, the dialectical argument can continue as long as the parties are willing to dispute with each other, or until the argument ends by imposition of the superior will.

3. ARGUMENTS WITHOUT SYSTEMATICITY: The dialectic format does not lend itself to systematic study or investigation. Instead, it directs the focus of the disputation to the particular portions of arguments being made at a given instant, rather than to the sequence or panorama of arguments leading up to that point in time. Such arguments become the classical, “you can’t see the forest for the trees,” type of argument because the parties are concentrating on the petty details of particular propositions instead of attempting to precipitate some universal principles from the context of the arguments.

4. ARGUMENTS FILLED WITH OPINIONS INSTEAD OF FACTS: The dialectical argument often ends in a he-said-she-said deadlock because vapid opinions are being bantered about instead of unassailable facts. The parties retreat to their own houses and harbor the opinions they have just exposed in the dialect, smug in the assurance that they are completely right. From behind the facade of newspapers and magazines, they hurl opinions back and forth as if those words could do genuine damage to the opponent. Only later do they discover that fact-finders out in the world make mince-meat out their “arguments,” which the agonists have pretended to be factual, when, in fact, such arguments can be shown to be only opinionated thoughts arising from unthinking minds. One recalls, for instance, the Presidential Election of 1984, when Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale traded barbs with each other. A disinterested observer might have heard only trivial opinions being proffered by each candidate. But when Mondale told the whole world that he would “raise your taxes,” the dialect - and the election - was really over at that point in time. The mere opinions that many people heard (or held about the candidates) had changed into hard facts that affected their wallets, and Mondale went back to Minnesota crushed in utter defeat. The dialect had ended when mere, silly opinions had mutated into a hard, crystallized, unassailable fact of the threat of rising taxes.

B8005-5 Arguments: Clarification of Opinions

THE CLARIFICATION OF OPINIONS: We could say that some arguments serve to establish particular opinions in others where no such opinions existed previously. To “win” an argument, thus, is to form or affect a new opinion in another person.

TRIVIALITY: But let us understand, first, that all arguments that seek to change opinions are, by their very nature, trivial. While it is true that the arguments themselves may seem very important to the persons arguing the particular cases, in any reasonable scheme of things it makes very little difference whether I believe, say, that the moon is either made of Green Cheese or if it is made of Compressed Twinkies. In either case my opinion - along with one American dollar - will get me a coffee at McDonalds, and very little else; i.e., my opinions, like the arguments themselves, are ipso facto trivial.

THE NATURE OF OPINIONS: Since opinions are philosophically identical with contradictions, there can be no “correct” opinions. Instead, there is nothing out there but a bewildering array of competing opinions, each of which is valid for his owner, but not necessarily for others. Listening to others bray about their opinions is very similar to flipping through a catalogue of highway signs: each sign wags its scolding finger in your face without any practical effect. At the end of the day, the catalogue - and your interlocutors’ opinions - can be tossed into the trash can.

THE FUTILITY OF ARGUING AGAINST OPINIONS: In any really objective sense of the word, it’s a hopeless task to badger another person with relentless ferocity in order to change his opinion. Far better, one should allow the other to steep in his delusions until he, himself, comes to the conclusion that his opinion is unwarranted by existing conditions or facts. Don’t change the opinions of others; let the conditions change the opinions:

EDUCATION: We often hear an array of arguments about spending additional sums on education. Almost always such arguments take the form of what will happen to "our children" if we fail to spend less than x-dollars per pupil. It is a fruitless task to counter such arguments with economic specificity. Rather, it is always a more effective approach to give the education leeches precisely what they ask for in the hope that eventually they will build such a large edifice that the salaries, operating and maintenance costs will simply overwhelm the system. Currently, many state governments are operating with budgets severely in deficit because of past excesses in granting every silly educational demand that was placed upon the state legislature. For years conservatives have argued for some kind of restraint, and they have made those arguments to no avail - until now. Once the critical mass has been reached with extravagant spending (as it is today), further arguments are no longer necessary because everyone from the smallest child to the oldest man can see that the budgets are not sustainable under any taxing scheme. The educational establishment is ready to become undone by its past "successes."

KEYNESIAN ECONOMICS: At the present time we are participating in an economic experiment. Some, like the Captain Ja-Boom Tisch's (i.e., Obama's) administration, have argued for stimulus spending to give a Keynesian boost to the economy. Huge sums of money had been spent in the attempt to prove that Keynesianism actually does something. To date, however, the results are exceedingly unsatisfactory. The amount of money that's been spent is slowly crushing the private sector, and less charitably, is destroying the United States of America. Yet the persons responsible for continuing to support these silly Keynesian ideas are not dissuaded by the results that we are now seeing. Instead they firmly believe that we need to spend more to make this work. Or as one wag put it so well, "If you failed to fly after you jumped off a 10-foot step ladder, perhaps you could try jumping off of the roof of your house." There will come a point, obviously, when it is no longer feasible to pretend that additional deficit spending will stimulate the economy. The problem, however, is that the United States may no longer exist when these economic morons finally come to their senses.

KILLING ME SOFTLY WITH HIS WORDS: Second, all arguments that seek to change opinions are never attempts to discover objective truth itself, but instead, are always attempts to squeeze some gritty exudate through the grille surrounding the opponent’s head. The end of such argumentation is to smother the opponent in a virtual helmet of irrefutable logic, from which he cannot see or breathe or even speak. All in all, the argument seeks to conclude with one party silent and unable to speak.

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.

B8004-1 Evidence

Quite often, one encounters people who live a “scientific” life. They have learned certain scientific precepts (really, “opinions”) at the feet of other scientists, and they have learned to use a scientific jargon that colors their thinking. It is amazing how often these scientists pretend that somehow their thinking is superior to that of people who live an unscientific life because of their facility with those precepts and with that scientific jargon. Yet, they are surely a deluded people.

Take the case of religious revelation: scientists reject this out of hand because it lacks a grounding in the material world. They will insist that one cannot believe in such things because there is no material basis for it. They then further complicate this difficulty by arguing that logic must rule where materiality is absent. Their argument, in its simplest form, goes something like this: “If I can’t see it, then it doesn’t exist.” That is really another way of saying that they do not find the evidence of revelation to be credible because it lacks a certain type of materiality.

Ah, yes. Sweet materiality. It is such a dangerous thing, this materiality. For, if one insists upon grounding everything in materiality, eventually, one runs into sustained and intractable contradictions. The scientist rejects the biblical story of creation, for example, because it does not accord with his material view of nature. It seems fanciful and absurd to him. But more importantly, the biblical story of creation is rejected, because it lacks the kind of evidence that the scientists seeks in marshaling his arguments. It is based on revelation rather than in material nature. Of course, the scientist rejects that kind of evidence because it is a based on, well, revelation, instead of “science.”

Then, the scientist does a very curious thing. He explains the world on the basis of logic. That the world exists is really beyond question. The scientist’s problem is to explain that existence, and he rejects the revelation from biblical sources. Therefore he has to explain the existence of the world strictly in terms of materiality. But if the world is all there is (to paraphrase Wittgenstein), then one cannot look for explanations beyond the material world. So, at that point, logic takes over. The most reasonable explanation for the existence (or the creation of the world) is sought by the scientist because there is no experiment any scientist could conduct that would demonstrate the formation of the material world. Materiality, per se, is beyond experimental manipulation. The only thing left is logic, and the scientist gives us his best reason for the existence of things.

But isn’t that a very curious thing? Instead of experimentation, the scientist gives us a reasonable narration; instead of facts, he gives us reasons; and, instead of proofs, he gives us opinions. Funny thing for a scientist to do, that, eh? Where is his scientific method? Where is his epistemological integrity? How can he reject revelation with such ease, and then present us with nothing as an explanation for the world, and still consider what he’s doing to be science? You don’t want the messiness of creation by God to explain the existence of the world? Okay. Well, why not try the Big Bang Theory? Yeah, let’s run with that. We’ll take an event that occurred say fifteen, twenty, thirty billion years ago. Pick your own favorite starting point. I won’t quibble over half a dozen billion years. It happened so far in the past that nobody can call you a liar if you miss it by, say, one or two billion years. That’s always the very best strategy: have a scientific theory about something that cannot be checked by other people. Then supply a number of unassailable principles, such as, the color of light receding from the viewer (“red shift”), to supply the logical underpinnings for the explanation of that creation. Play with the theory until it sounds very logical and reasonable, and then presented to the public as science.

Excuse me, but how is that any more “scientific” than foisting any myth upon an unsuspecting public? Why would a scientist’s hollow reverberations of his own mind be more “scientific” than the evidence supplied by the Bible - or any other evidence for that matter? Why does the opinion of a man wearing a white laboratory coat trump that of a theologian with Holy Scripture in his hands?

B8003-1 Opinions

DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS OF OPINIONS:

a. OPINIONS ARE COMPLEX INFERENCES: They are inferences drawn from factual or non-factual data, or from other opinions, or from narratives, or from anecdotes about the material or immaterial universe.

b. OPINIONS CAN BE EXPRESSED IN ANY TERMS: They can be expressed in any terms thought to be useful by the holder of the opinion, and are not limited to mensurability even when they contain pseudo-mensurable elements as in some of the following examples:

“Two men robbed the gas station.”
“The nine pennies in the drawer belong to Robert.”
“I got a double eagle on the seventh hole.”
“Some Democrats want to turn this country into a socialist state.”

c. OPINIONS CANNOT BE SUPPORTED BY FACTS: Opinions are not mensurable assertions and can never be supported by facts. They are assertions of belief based on credible (and sometimes, incredible) evidence. The evidence, however, may be Formal, i.e., the rational and logical entailments of consistent and well-structured propositions; or Circumstantial, i.e., “he was there, so he must have done it;” or Anecdotal, e.g., “families that eat together regularly are less likely to have kids who get into trouble.”

d. OPINIONS ARE ALWAYS SUBJECTIVE: Sometimes opinions are considered as low-grade or “subjective” facts”:

e. OPINIONS OFTEN DO NOT REQUIRE A LOGICAL CONSTRUCTION:

f. THE TEST OF AN OPINION IS ITS REASONABLENESS: Opinions are always gauged on their reasonableness and consistency. Since by their very nature opinions cannot have elements of enumeration, extension or duration, opinions are tested by conformance to some known standard of fluidity and grace. If the opinion itself seems to be reasonable and logical and consistent, without compelling errors, it is deemed a good opinion. Often times in scientific circles, this particular test is applied to things such as the Big Bang Theory and Evolutionary Theory. In both cases, there is no factual content to test. As a result, the Big Bang Theory and Evolutionary Theory are often subjected to the LBR Test: if it “looks ‘bout right,” then it passes the test.

g. OPINIONS MAY NOT BE QUANTIFIED: It does not make sense to say, for example, “George Bush is 2.6 percent (or 26 percent or 260 percent) evil.”

h. OPINIONS ARE NOT SELF-REFERENTIAL: They imply everything beyond themselves in the same way that a logical contradiction entails everything else.

i. OPINIONS, GENERALLY, ARE NOT VERIFIABLE AND REPEATABLE BY OTHER COMPETENT INDIVIDUALS: However, others may support similar opinions, or others may support opinions that do not agree with those opinions. One should recognize that considerable variation exists with opinions. As a general tendency, though, the results vary considerably from person to person to the point that opinions may differ widely - even to the point of outright contradiction.

j. OPINIONS ARE NOT TRIVIAL:

k. A COLLECTION OF OPINIONS CONSTITUTES A LIST: As opinions themselves can imply everything, so also lists can imply everything. Lists, sometimes called “data,” are used, however, to form subsequent opinions or more deeply articulated opinions. But the lists themselves are not limited to a definite conclusion.

l. OPINIONS, COLLECTIVELY GROUPED IN A LIST, ARE NOT INTER-RELATED: They are intransitive and independent of one another.

m. THE CONFUSION OF OPINIONS WITH FACTS: Science, as a self-styled, mensurable activity, frequently falls into the error of confusing opinions with facts. All scientific “evidence” is ultimately based on opinions and not on facts, even though the “data” will appear to be “factual.” In fact, the work of science is to make opinions appear to be objective by quantifying that which cannot be quantified.

n. THE MATHEMATIZATION OF OPINIONS YIELDS PARTICULAR DESCRIPTIONS OF RELATIONS:


OPINION NARRATIVES:

a. BIKER LOG: Some time ago I was directed by others to a web-site that featured a so-called report of a bicycling trip across the state of Iowa. On the whole I found this report unsatisfactory for several reasons. The author had a very perky and sophomoric style of writing that eventually enervated the reader with its strained effort to be funny. The attempts at humor were so contrived and forced that the work was difficult to read through in its entirety (I couldn’t finish it). It was far too long to keep anyone’s attention, and if one did not share a cycling passion with the writer, it was uninteresting as well.

Instead of supplying a useful narrative to his readers, the writer had only observations and opinions of what he had seen on the trip across state of Iowa. And invariably, the citizens there were pictured as hopeless and flawed individuals, who had voted Republican in the most recent elections, and who entertained perverse ideas, such as hostility to a variety of liberal views on taxation, gun control, and the death penalty, etc.

On the whole, the antic style of this particular writer reminded one of the perpetual class cutup back in grade school who always attempted to amuse his classmates with his highly inappropriate coprolalia. Either that, or this writer sounded like an inept person who tried to tell a joke that you had already heard before, and told that joke with such a telegraphic style that you were bored to death before the person ever got to the punch line. The only thing that could possibly make his writing worse would be his writing with him under the influence of quart of tequila.

On the whole, though, the article was useful for the lessons it taught about writing in general, strange as that may seem. Normally, one would expect to find a cycling report that described the trip and some of the things that were seen on the trip and some of the lessons that are learned there. Instead, the reader was treated to an endless, piecemeal memory-dump on the part of the author. Particularly annoying were his uses of foreign words and phrases mixed in with the most trite language possible. I suppose one was supposed to gauge his sophistication by the use of those haute words, but his childish style ruined the effect completely. By combining those sarcastic and ill-chosen words in the same sentence, the man merely looked foolish, like the rookie writer trying to be a sophisticate and a comedian at the same time. It simply didn’t work.

But I would have to say that his complete lack of narration gave a very staccato effect to his writing - almost a bam-bam-bam slide show effect - that made it very difficult to see the point the man was trying to make in his writings. Instead, each paragraph detailed a separate, unconnected view of what he saw on that cycling trip.

The comments were stated as his opinions of what he saw and did on that trip; or opinions of what he thought about the inadequacies of the citizens there; or his opinions of life in general. And he offered those opinions over and over as if any reader in the world might be interested in what he thought. But instead of being something that could be received with grace, those opinions merely showed a disillusioned and bigoted fool, who seemed to be convinced that the world thought he was God’s gift to writing. Of course, he wasn’t. Fools always come off as fools; they’re seldom seen as geniuses or as God’s gift to anyone. And this writer was no different. He was a garden-variety fool, with touches of literary talent, who managed to annoy everyone who looked at his piece of writing.

b. RAW OPINION: “The greatest of this [environmental] writing is neither sentimental nor obvious - instead, it is very nearly shamanistic, allowing the natural world to translate itself into English in all sorts of ways. The emotional ways, taxonomic ways, descriptive ways, intimate ways, Olympian ways. It is a community of writers, with all the particulars of their upbringings, tastes, genders, mental states, seeking faithfully to serve as some sort of connection between people and the rest of the world. That faithfulness demands the most scrupulous accuracy - you have to know the tree’s resilience, the coyote’s circling route, the carbon molecule’s structure. But it also demands that you care, which is the highest form of objectivity [emphasis not in the original]” (Bill McKibben. “Speaking Up for the Environment,” The Writing Life: Writers on How They Think and Work, Marie Arana, ed., New York: PublicAffairs, 2003, pp. 363-364).