The Auburn Philosophy Club is hosting another public forum today (Wednesday, 13 November, 5:00, at Mama Mocha’s II, behind the Hound). The topic is Applied Ethics. I’m on the panel and will be talking about punishment.
Samma-vacha
“My own counsel will I keep on who is to be trained.” — Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
“Our own counsel we will keep on who is ready.” — Yoda, The Phantom Menace (1998)
What’s depressing about this is not so much that George Lucas doesn’t know what keeping one’s own counsel means,* as that in eighteen years no one had the courage to tell Lucas he’d made a mistake.
* Lucas evidently think keeping one’s own counsel means deciding for oneself, when it actually means keeping one’s thoughts and plans to oneself. And when you’re in the middle of explaining that you think someone is not ready to be trained, you are precisely not keeping your thoughts to yourself on the matter.
The Yellow Wallpaper
Pro-Choice Auburn (of which I’m one of the organisers) is hosting a screening of the movie Juno tonight (Unitarian Church here in Auburn, at 6:00), followed by a panel discussion (including your humble correspondent) on the film’s treatment of abortion and related issues. Details here; film trailer here.
There Will Be Blood Food.
An Aegis Very Essential
Agents of SHIELD has been watchable but not terrific. But tonight’s episode seemed to take things to a new level. I’m really curious now to see where things are going.
Eis Duo Treis ho de Tetartos Pou
I’m familiar with views (and here I include both scientific and mythological views) according to which the universe has a beginning and an ending; and with views according to which it has no beginning and no ending; and with views according to which it has a beginning but no ending.
But I can’t recall coming across any view, either scientific or mythological, according to which the universe has an ending but no beginning.
Now it doesn’t surprise me that that’d be the least popular of the views. Despite the admonitions of Epicurus and Spinoza, we tend to find the prospect of future nonexistence more depressing than the prospect of past nonexistence; so objections to finitude, for those who have them, are more likely to focus on the future than on the past. Furthermore, counting down from infinity likewise seems more objectionably paradoxical than counting up to infinity; so objections to infinitude, for those who have them, are more likely to focus on the past than on the future.
All the same, it’s a big old world with a lot of people in it, and the space of possible views does tend to get populated, so I’d likewise be surprised if nobody had ever held the end-but-no-beginning view. My bet is that someone has. I just don’t know of any example.
Suggestions?
No True Fallacy
I’ve noticed a tendency for the charge of committing the “No True Scotsman” fallacy to be leveled at anyone who favours more restrictive definitions of something than the person leveling the charge favours. This is a misunderstanding of how the “No True Scotsman” fallacy works. Just saying something of the form “No true Scotsman would do X” is not by itself a commission of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy – though the fallacy does involve making a statement of that form. A fallacy has to be an error in inference from one statement to another; a single statement on its ownsome, involving no inference, can’t be a fallacy.
The “No True Scotsman” fallacy arises when someone uses a restrictive version of a definition in order to rebut a counterexample to a claim that was made using a less restrictive definition. So, for example:
1. SMITH: “Democracies never go to war against other democracies.”
2. JONES: “What about the war between Israel and Lebanon? They were both democracies.”
3. SMITH: “No country that commits that kind of aggression counts as a genuine democracy.”
What makes Smith guilty of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy here is not that she employs an idiosyncratically restrictive definition of “democracy” in (3). Employing an idiosyncratically restrictive definition is not by itself a fallacy, since it’s not by itself an argument. If an argument is offered for the idiosyncratically restrictive definition, that argument may of course be fallacious – or it may not. We can’t know until we look at the argument. (Merely using a term more restrictively than in ordinary usage is no proof that the more restrictive usage is wrong; sometimes ordinary usage by itself contains commitments to a more restrictive usage. For example, I think that’s true of the Socrates-Stoic-Cicero-Augustine-Aquinas-Blackstone-Spooner-Lane-MLK Jr. position that an unjust law is no true law.)
Rather, what convicts Smith of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy is the fact that she treats her claim in (3), using “democracy” restrictively, as if it supported her claim in (1), where “democracy” was clearly being used non-restrictively. In other words, the “No True Scotsman” fallacy is an instance of the fallacy of equivocation. (Example of equivocation: “A bank is a safe place to deposit your paycheck; the edge of a river is a bank; therefore the edge of a river is a safe place to deposit your paycheck.” The plausibility of the premises depends on taking them to be using the term “bank” differently; the validity of the inference depends on taking them to be using the term “bank” in the same way.)
If Smith were, clearly and non-obfuscatingly, willing to reject (1) in the non-restrictive sense, and endorse it only in the restrictive sense, then although she might have an implausible definition of “democracy” – and a more vacuous opening claim than initially appeared – she would be innocent of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy.