Necessity and sufficiency yield material equivalence, not necessarily uniqueness. As usual, you have so convinced yourself that no amount of propositional logic will pierce your obtuseness.
You also a weak sense of irony.
Another thought quixotic: If I was to tell you that viruses can cause cancer, which is true, and then I was to tell you that with the proper anti-viral medications, cancer would be eliminated… would you be entitled to respond by saying that cancer wouldn’t actually be eliminated because I was missing the fact that there are many other things which can cause cancer, and I was treating the situation as if viruses were the only thing that could possibly cause cancer?
Magey:
Your argument is equivalent to hearing someone claim “If America was to cut out fatty foods, we would eliminate obesity!” and then arguing that because it was phrased as P --> Q rather than P <–> Q, that they not really creating an absurdly oversimplified situation where without that one cause, nothing else could serve as a cause of obesity.
You are ignoring that they would just be saying that without that one cause, nothing else would cause it. That is, that there would effectively be no other causes, because if there were other causes, it would still go on to a certain degree.
And by the way, Reese’s claim was an instance of inductive reasoning.
Propositional logic is deductive reasoning.
You are analyzing inductive reasoning as if it was deductive reasoning.
Luckily, you managed to miss the point with maximum smarm and pretension.
Of course it does. If God waves his magic wand and wipes America off of the map tomorrow, erases it from everyone’s memory, perhaps terrorism is eliminated for a day, maybe a week. Then people start to get up in arms about… hell, I don’t know, how much the Detroit Lions suck.
Now you’re playing word games and shifting the goal posts. You didn’t say that you know people who consider imperialist policies to be the one and only root cause of terrorism. You specifically identified people who called out American foreign policy.
I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this, because it’s early (for me) and of course you can’t eliminate cancer by eliminating viruses. But all right, let’s have a scenario where a person has a viral-induced cancer, they’re dosed with wonderful antiviral medications, and the cancer is eliminated. Does that mean that viruses are the one and only root cause of cancer? No, because if that person then proceeds to bathe twice daily in a known carcinogen like benzene, while still taking their antiviral medication, they’ll get cancer again, even though it had previously been eliminated.
Tying this back to the original scenario, Mr. Lee is saying that American foreign policy is causing terrorism, and that by changing it, you could eliminate terrorism. What he’s saying (IMO) is not that American foreign policy is the one and only root cause of terrorism, but rather that this recent spate of increased terrorist activity is the result of American foreign policy. (And, just to emphasize, he’s still wrong about this clarified statement).
I mean, for fuck’s sake, the mujahadeen in Afghanistan were a response to RUSSIAN foreign policy. Surely that finding right there proves that not even someone as odd as Mr. Lee can believe that American foreign policy is the one and only root cause of terrorism!
As far as smarm and pretension go, I am just getting warmed up with you. I could condescend to you all day. It won’t take me very long to get warmed up this time, because you are completely wrong on absolutely everything. It gives me great pleasure to lead you forth from error, because part of me feels I am redeeming myself and further repudiating the years of personal happiness I lost to forensics. Perhaps you, too, will sin no more and will take steps to correct not only your stylistic rigidity but also your intellectual rigidity.
I am feeling somewhat magnanimous today. I hope you both manage to kill Deadclaws and learn something about logic.
Reese asserts that changes to government policy will eliminate terrorism. This is a proposition that can be expressed symbolically. He argues (somewhat) that the hypothesis supports the conclusion factually but cannot prove it analytically. He arrived at the proposition inductively, but the proposition is expressed deductively.
In fact, almost any argument can be expressed either deductively or inductively. The difference is in the expression and in whether or not the hypothesis analytically ensures the truth of the conclusion. You might want to read up a little about something called entailment.
You claim that the Reese’s assertion implies that there are no other root causes of terrorism, because if removal of one cause removes terrorism, there can be no other causes. This also seems to be what everyone else is arguing against, so I am fairly confident that this is what you are actually saying.
If this is not the case, then your articulation is being lost on pretty much everyone and I suggest you try to represent your arguments symbolically if you can.
Reese’s claim was propositional. Your claim is also propositional. Reese’s claim may or may not be false empirically, but your claim is inarguably false, regardless of the facts, because it is illogical. I explained this to you somewhat succinctly above, which you interpreted to be smarm and pretension. In retrospect, actual smarm and pretension on my part would have been completely justified.
Speaking generally, there are several root causes of terrorism just as there are several root causes of obesity. Solving for one of them might eliminate the problem altogether, provided that the solved cause is both necessary and sufficient to solve the problem. Eliminating fatty foods might be necessary and sufficient, but then again, eliminating sugar might be as well. Or forcing Americans to run five miles every day. The fact that a fatty diet is a root cause and a significant alteration of diet will solve the problem does not imply that there are no other root causes or no other possible solutions. Just that without the fatty foods, the other root causes are no longer collectively necessary or sufficient to cause the problem. This does not mean that they do not cause the problem, because if you eliminated one of the other causes instead of fatty foods, it might solve the problem as well. Eliminating fatty foods does not imply that a sedendary lifestyle or high soda intake are not root causes of obesity.
Changing American foreign policy may eliminate terrorism. Completely realigning the states of the middle east to reflect tribal and cultural boundaries might do it as well. Eliminating poverty and providing real opportunities and human rights to oppressed peoples might also eliminate terrorism. Terrorism might not persist if you solve any of these three problems individually. The fact that you might choose to skin the cat one way does not imply ex post that there were no alternatives you could have chosen. Your logic tells us that if one method of skinning solved the problem, there could have not been any other causes.
Obviously this is wrong.
TLDU
But that is not his claim!
He did not claim that it would suspend, modify, emeliorate, lessen, taper, or reduce terorrism. He claimed it would eliminate it.
Eliminate. In its entirety. No allowance left for pockets of terrorism or different types. But that terrorism would simply be eliminated.
No. No, and yet again no.
You are shifting the goalposts.
Reese did not make an individual claim about one nation, or one type of terrorism as cancer in one person at one point would be analogous to. He made a claim that terrorism, period, full stop, would be eliminated.
Your analogy is flawed, because Reese did not say that if American foreign policy is changed, one instance/type/method of terrorism will be eliminated, but that terrorism, without qualifier, will be eliminated.
An accurate analogy would be “Cancer is a response to viral infection and if we eliminate viral infections, we will eliminate cancer”.
Which, if you listen to the blame-America-first nutters, was a response to
America’s oppression of the valid Communist form of government and imposition of Cold War policies which forces Russia to expand its sphere of influence or risk being totally isolated.
No, I am not. I’m pointing out that many people do not consider American foreign policy to be distinct from other imperialist foreign policies. I’m pointing out that in the worldview of some folks, there is no difference between Imperial Rome and “Imperial America”, and that both use the same methods of control and provoke the same responses.
In any case, we’re now talking in circles and I’m tired of this thread.
Adios.
Not sure if you’ll respond, but what the hell.
Right. That’s fine. But that’s not to say he thinks that it can’t come back in a different form due to a different cause. That’s an assumption YOU are making, not Mr. Reese (dunno why I kept calling him Mr. Lee).
A person can accrue credit card debt by buying a PC online, and then eliminate credit card debt by paying off the balance. That does not mean that buying PCs online is the one and only cause of credit card debt, nor does it mean that credit card debt has been permanently eradicated. If she books a plane ticket online and pays with the same credit card, her debt is back without buying a PC, even though her credit card debt had earlier been eliminated.
None of these disclaimers were in your original statement, nor could they reasonably be derived from your original statement. Hence, you are shifting the goalposts. It’s not really that big a deal. Really. All you have to do is say, “Fine, what I MEANT is that some loony Lefties believe that the one and only cause of terrorism is American foreign policy, or analagous foreign policy philosophies throughout history.”
Given what I’ve seen of your, ahem, vigorous posting style, I doubt we’ll be seeing such a correction.