As I said in another thread:
Verifiability is actually a pretty strong counter-argument. Not only has Smith heard an overwhelming amount of testimonies that the Great Wall of China exists, he can also go and see it himself if he wishes to make the effort.
So an interesting variation is how does Smith know World War II happened? He wasn’t born then and he didn’t witness it. And he can’t travel back in time and verify its existence. So he’s forced to rely on the testimony of other people.
Well, Smith is indeed arguing from authority, which is a formal fallacy. But, you don’t have a formal inductive argument here. Jones begins with a fallacious statement that the wall he’s looking at is the biggest because it looks to be biggest. Since he’s the one making that claim, then Smith could have simply replied, “prove it… measure all the walls in the world and get back to me showing me that this one has the largest measurements.”
In the absence of proof of Jones’ original assertion, Smith is free to make another assertion. Now they need to agree on how they will conduct the proof and if Jones isn’t willing to trust the reports of other people, then he must visit every wall in the world personally to prove his original assertion.
It seems to me there isn’t a formal logical fallacy on the part of either Jones or Smith. Doesn’t it come down to:
Jones: Speculation
Smith: Refutation of speculation based on assertion
Jones: Interrogative
Smith: Exposition of prior assertion
Jones: Demand for evidence
Smith: Presentation of evidence
Jones: Demand for alternative form of evidence
Smith: Negative reply
Jones: Conclusion that lack of alternative form of evidence negates original assertion
Jones’s conclusion may seem silly if Smith’s assertion is “There is a larger wall in China.” but not so much if it is "It was Mary who murdered John last week. So I think there’s disagreement over the nature of the evidence, but there’s no logical fallacy per se.
Once you counter with another assertion, you assume the burden of proof for that.
Ideally, it should’ve gone this way:
It’s metaphorically a martial arts thing. Don’t oppose their rhetorical momentum with your own. Just let them follow through and slip themselves up with their own weakness.
I was discussing Nessie with a friend who had, as a child, been to a boy scout camp by Loch Ness. We attributed the lack of monster sightings to the fact that the scouts were all too young to drink whisky.
And you obviously didn’t have no tree fiddy.
This is right, I think. There’s no reason to consider direct sense data to be the only valid kind of evidence, which Jones assumes without justifying it. Also, an argument that is made just for the sake of arguing, just to ‘win’ so to speak, is sometimes called ‘eristic’, after the Greek goddess of strife, Eris. Schopenhauer basically wrote the book on this.
No, this one is true. I have heard about it myself. The wall in China is so big that you can see it from space according to some book I have.
[QUOTE=Mangetout]
Jones is arguing that the evidence of one’s own eyes is somehow fundamentally and categorically different from any other kind of evidence, which is Special Pleading.
[/quote]
Ah, that sounds more like what I was looking for! Thanks.
" The wall in China is so big that you can see it from space according to some book I have."
Some old book I take it?
See for example Snopes or Scientific American.
It’s not a fallacy and it has nothing to do with formal logic. Jones isn’t even wrong.
It’s straightforward Cartesian doubt.
Descartes argued he solved the problem with “I think therefore I am”. (He didn’t).
Well, as I said, I’m perfectly comfortable dismissing solipsism as utterly unproductive. If that is folly, it’s a small matter because either:[ol]
[li]I’m a brain in a jar and nobody else exists to know I was wrong or…[/li][li]I’m a projection of your singular brain-jar consciousness and the error is actually yours**[/li][/ol]
**Which is OK for you because of #1
No, really it isn’t. Cartesian doubt involves doubting the evidence of your own senses. Jones does not appear to be doubting his own senses at all - he believes the wall he is looking at is both real and large - he just distrusts second hand reports from other people (and thinks Smith should too).
If there is a fallacy involved (and I am not sure there is, because there is not much of an argument), it is that of confusing argument from authority (which is not a fallacy, per se, but, when used properly, a cogent and invaluable form of inductive argument), with argument from illegitimate authority. Smith is not committing a fallacy, but Jones is incorrectly implying that he is.
Obligatory Argument Clinic.
I’m not reading the rest of the thread, so this may have been covered.
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All knowledge is contextual. Every fact we know is logically related, directly or indirectly, to every other fact we know.
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Contradictions don’t exist.
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If you think you’ve encountered a contradiction, you are dealing with erroneous facts or premises, or your logic is faulty.
Bearing all of this in mind: if China suddenly vanished (or never existed at all), it would have very major repercussions throughout the world. We’d be living in a totally different world than the one we live in now. But every single fact we know is, directly or indirectly, compatible with the existence of China; and there is zero compatibility with its nonexistence.
The same can be said for the existence of atoms, the Crab Nebula, all the solar eclipses of the next century, and Cleopatra’s paternal grandmother.
I just blinked twice and yawned here at my monitor. That is a fact.
Whoops, just kidding! I blinked three times. How does that affect every other fact you know.?*
How do you explain Schroedinger’s cat, then, and the underlying premise of that thought experiment?
But the question is how do you know about any of those things.
*Before you say “butterfly effect”, I’d remind that one of the implications of complexity theory as I understand it, is that consequences are unknowable beforehand and possibly even in retrospect; you can’t know whether this particular butterfly flapping its wings in China will result in a hurricane, typhoon or anything else. Likewise you cannot assert that my blinking twice vs. three times has any knowable connection to anything else.
You’re really doing this? Seriously?
I know what blink means. I know what the words you are saying means. I have a mental image of who you are that has now changed because you are making such an ignorant argument.
I personally don’t see the contradiction on Schroedinger’s cat, as the premise is faulty. But the general way of dealing with quantum theory is to posit a type of quantum logic that is accurate
The same way I know everything else. By preponderance of evidence, weighed on the Bayesian scale of certainty.
Just go read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality before trying to disprove rationalism. Otherwise, you are just going to sound ignorant.
Because you can google up a picture.
