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For reasons unknowable to me, I am persistently accused of engaging in a type of fallacy referred to as the argumentum ad hominem or simply ad hominem. So, I feel it incumbent upon me to cast aside my previous forays into politics and current events, turn away from philosophy of mind, and delve (if only for one post) into the world of critical thinking.
Argumentum ad hominem can be loosely translated from the Latin as follows: argument to the man or argument against the man. It is what is generally referred to as an informal fallacy and is a commonly used rhetorical technique. There are several forms of ad hominem arguments, but the most common employment of the fallacy works along these lines.
Person A makes a statement, claim, or assertion.
Person B attacks the character of Person A.
The character attack on Person A undermines the statement, claim, or assertion made by Person A, without addressing the content of Person A's statement, claim, or assertion.
This is rhetorical measure often employed in the United States legal system, whereby a witness's credibility is undermined through character attacks.
The problem with ad hominem arguments, the very reason they are a fallacy, rests on two major points.
Point one: No matter how untrustworthy a person may have been historically, there cannot be total certainty that the claim, statement, or assertion they are currently making is false.
Point two: The person attacking the claim, statement or assertion may be doing so because they cannot find fault with the position.
As with most things in philosophy, it comes down to a question of knowledge. Since we are denied access to the minds of others, we lack certainty regarding them. Without this certainty, we are tempted to attack the person, rather than the claim, because it is easier and because we have inherent doubt regarding others motives. However, philosophy rarely tolerates such ambiguity without extensive bracketing (a technique in which fundamental questions are set aside in order to address other questions) and, as such, does not tolerate the ad hominem as a legitimate argumentative technique.
With any luck, I will have cleared up some misconceptions regarding the nature of ad hominem arguments and will be less frequently accused of using them.
Ok, it's not my normal modus operandi to come out in support of many things, but I think this one is important. Two charitable organizations that normally support the ACLU were caught up in the $50 billion Ponzi scheme that has been in the news recently. As such, those organizations have been forced to close their doors and the nearly $1,000,000 dollars in donations they normally give to the ACLU have vanished.
Whether or not you agree with everything the ACLU does, it is my opinion that they serve a fundamental function in protecting the Constitution of the United States: one of the most important defenses of liberty ever set down on paper. If you believe that they are serving an important function in the world, they could use some financial support right now. Of course, they would like you to donate enough to become a member, but they aren't greedy and will accept anything you might be willing to give.
If you would like to join me in supporting this organization you can visit their site here. There is a link on their homepage that says "Give Today!" and if you click on that link you will be taken to a page with giving options.
Thanks everyone!
Ok, the title may be a little unfair. This is really just about one crazy Catholic. Apparently, according to recent yahoo news article, a priest in South Carolina informed his parishioners that if they voted for Obama, they were providing support for "intrinsic evil." In doing so they were jeopardizing their souls to take communion without doing penance for their sins against God.
There's a little part of me that rejoices when some religious figure goes out of their way to do something exceptionally stupid. Mostly due to the fact that it makes fabulous fodder for a blog posting. This particular instance of rampant stupidity just goes to show how far religion has not come in the last few centuries. As someone with a pretty heavy background in critical thinking and logic (can't be a philosophy major without them), I'm forced to analyze the problem with this position.
Basically, this guy is saying that the prohibition against abortion now extends into the realm of voting. It's not enough to abstain from abortion if you get pregnant. It's not enough to try to convince others to abstain from abortion. If you vote for a candidate that supports the right of free citizens to make the moral choice to have an abortion, as the law in America gives them the right to do, you are now supporting "intrinsic evil." Now, I'm not sure just what intrinsic evil is supposed to be. The test for something to be intrinsic is pretty rigorous and the term evil is pretty vacuous. Unless you're buying into some kind of moral intuitionism, it pretty much fails. And, Christianity doesn't leave a lot of room for moral intuitionism. The rules are pretty straightforward. Beyond that, I'm relatively confident that the causal chain breaks down somewhere between voting for a man who may support the rights of pregnant women to make the choice to have an abortion and being personally, morally culpable for intrinsic evil.
Once more, I extend the invitation to all self-righteous, male religious figures (those who lack the physical, emotional, and psychological knowledge to have the right to judge the act of abortion) to shut up and back off. You aren't equipped to speak of the issue, let alone judge it.
Today, I am proud of my country. For the first time, in a long time, the American people have risen above the specter of racism and the fanaticism of the new, ultra-conservative right. There is no question about the winner in this election. No court will appoint the President of the United States. The citizens of this nation spoke a word and that word was Obama.
It some ways it still seems surreal, as thought it may be taken away at a moment's notice. But the numbers don't change and the results are real. I looked around today and I saw something on the faces of the people around me, something that has been absent for years. I saw hope, powerful resurrected hope!
No, I don't believe that things will change quickly. I don't believe that the changes to come will be easy. I do think that the right man was elected to lead us through those changes. Perhaps, what I see in him is what I do not see in so many other politicians. I see some shred of innocence left in him. The sick and omni-present power games in Washington have not left him entirely jaded. He has not been been there long enough to become insulated from his constituents nor, more importantly, from reality itself. It is refreshing and a long needed change in the character of American leadership
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September 14th 2008 20:29
Now that Sarah Palin in fully ensconced in her new role as vice-presidential candidate, let's examine the great joke that she is in this election. What we are faced with is a great pile of the politics of same from Grandpa McSame.
The Republicans are trying, so very hard, to tout Palin as some kind of progressive symbol. She isn't. They're trying to make her out to be a regular, down home mom. She isn't. They want her to be seen as the sign of change in republican politics. She isn't. Here's why.
Sarah Palin isn't progressive because there's nothing about how she operates politically to suggest any progressive. She's hard-core, right-wing, Republican politics as usual. She's not your regular mom because, let's face it here, most women do not have stay at home husbands to deal with their children. Most moms do not have a staff to which they can delegate responsibility. Most moms are responsible enough not to take transnational flights while in the last trimester of pregnancy. What she is can be summed up by the following: Sarah Palin is a politician, end of statement. Politics is her priority. It's what defines her. Her, not to mention Grandpa McSame's campaign team's, suggestion that she is somehow representative is ludicrous and insulting: to women, to mothers, to voters, and to America at large. The suggestion that all women should somehow be able to do what she has done is downright destructive. You're average women will never have the kind of support team that Sarah Palin has at her disposal. Period. As such, she and her cronies should stop trying to sell her as the second coming of the feminist ideal, dressed in anti-liberal clothing
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September 10th 2008 23:39
I'll be taking a break today from considering the mind. Among the various and sundry things I am interested in, the forthcoming presidential election has captured my attention. For the most part, I find politics to be a dreary subject. It usually seems to consist of a great many people who spend the majority of their time telling lies to each other, their constituents, and themselves. They prance around like they matter a great deal more than they do and expect us to be interested in their trained-monkey like posturing. What's more unbelievable is that they are surprised by great, resounding yawn that follows their dancing. So why has politics captured my attention at a personal level for this election?
Nothing more or less than reason.
A this moment in time, American soldiers are scattered across the Middle East like so many chess pawns, fighting two wars that it is very unlikely they can win, and politicians at home are squabbling about who jumped off of Bush's War Wagon first. What does reason dictate at this juncture? Reason dictates that when confronted with an impossible situation that no amount of force can resolve, you withdraw
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Another 20th century response to the question of mind (not to mention Cartesian Dualism) was Physicalism. Unfortunately, Physicalism, like ice cream, comes in more than one flavor. Before we delve to deeply into the varieties of physicalism, a broad explanation is in order.
Physicalism, which was called Materialism in some early incarnations, asserts that the mind is part of the physical universe and subject to the physical laws that govern the universe. They tend to identify the mind with the brain as the physical embodiment of it. By placing the mind physically into the body by way of the brain, the interaction problem disappears. No more is there any question about just how messages move to and from the body and the mind.
Now, with the broad strokes out of the way, it's time to move on to the specific incarnations of physicalism
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Behaviorism was one 20th Century attempt to deal with the problem of the mind. For the hardcore philosopher, there are three distinct types of of Behaviorism. For the purposes of this blog, we will only deal with what is generally referred to as Psychological Behaviorism.
This type of Behaviorism is usually ascribed to the Psychologists John Watson and B. F. Skinner. What they assert is effectively the position that whatever mental states may exist (if they exist at all) are not publicly observable and, therefore, beyond the reach of the scientific method. What is publicly observable is behavior and, as such, behavior is all we have upon which to base our conclusions. What they have done is to effectively bracket the question of the existence of the mind entirely and say, "We can't get to it, so we will ignore or deny it's existence in favor of observable data."
While some behaviorists are not willing to deny outright the possibility of internal mental states, it is not within the doctrine of pure behaviorism to endorse or acknowledge it. As such, Behaviorism, while parading itself as a theory of mind, is for all intents and purposes a theory of avoidance of the mind.
While the Cartesian conception of the mind can be appealing, insofar as it offers the possibility of some kind of life beyond the mortal coil, it is rife with flaws.
One of the major objections to this take on the mind is that is seems unlikely, if not impossible, for a non-material mental substance to control a material physical substance. The question becomes: "What is the means, or mechanism, for the required communication?"
Descartes answers this question by citing something that he calls "animal spirits" (tiny bodies that travel through the blood) which would communicate the mind's messages to the body. Naturally, this "solution" is equally problematic since the tiny bodies are still material entities and subject to the same communication problem as the larger human form
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So, it's a bit late, but as promised the pieces on philosophy of mind are now arriving.
Theories about the nature of human mind reach back at least as far as Ancient Greece. Plato wrote about it and so did Aristotle. However, Philosophy of Mind in the modern era begins with René Descartes. Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, scientist and writer during the 17th century
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Comment by Mr. D and Philosophy
on Support for the American Civil Liberties Union