sordavie

Steeler, I take it what you mean by rhetoric is language that is used to please or persuade. But the word 'rhetoric' can also mean "gradios or excessively high flown style of speech." Maybe that's what Tybalt thought you meant, and so he presumed you had an attitude. Or it could have just been the "calm down" part.

Anyhow, rather than call the tools for regular ordinary debate rhetoric, let's call it informal logic as all the critical thinking courses do. I posted a link to some information on informal logic in my last post. It's from the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, an excellent resource for philosophy - probably the best (I bet Derdmeh would agree with me).

Much of the confusion arises from the ambiguity of words like 'valid' or 'sound'. In formal logic, these are technical words with precise meanings. However, that doesn't mean and English speaker cannot use these words to mean something else. Afterall, these are English words too. If somebody says "that sentence is valid," it doesn't automatically mean they're using the word 'valid' wrongly. What they mean is something like "that sentence is true" or "that sentence is acceptable." It's true that as a technical term in logic 'validity' is applicable only to arguments and not sentences, but "that sentence is valid" is perfectly fine ordinarily. I see the source of confusion over these terms. Some people use them in their technical sense. Other people are just speaking plain English.

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xTYBALTx

Mateo's thinking "What monster have I created here?!!?" Hahaha.

Sordavie - Does informal logic bear any relation to inductive logic? They seem similar to me, but I haven't had the time to read through the Stanford link thouroughly.

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Mateo

And it started out so innocently!

leejo

Would you call this a meta-argument?

sordavie

Well the relationship is complex, just like that of informal and deductive logic. It's hard to say exactly what that is. Inductive logic really is just an extension of deductive logic to less than certain reasoning. These are studies of formal logics. That is, the study of the form or structure of reasoning, without regard to the content of that reasoning.

Informal logic, on the other hand, was really developed as a way to teach students to reason competently. It does not focus solely on the formal aspects of reasoning, some of the formal principles come in to play. And it does take in to consideration the content. For instance, many of the fallacies are fallacies of content in some sense. Take ad hominem for example. It says your argument is fallacious if the conclusion relies on a premise which makes an attack on the character of some person. An ad hominem argument can, I take it, be formally valid or invalid. The fallacy has to do with the content of one or more of the premises.

The goals of these two subjects are quite different. The development of formal logic has given mathematicians and philosophers a very rigorous tool. The continued study in formal logic is really just refinement of that tool. Informal logic, however, was not meant to be a rigorous tool in that respect. It's really an educational tool for the general population.

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leejo

Dude I am completely flashing back to college.

Thank God for people like Woody Allen:

Logic is a terrific tool, but when it becomes an end in itself, it's dangerously close to navel-gazing.

How do you spot a bad argument in the real world? Look at the audience. If they're checking their blackberrys and saying "uh huh...uh huh...uh huh..." you've lost them and your argument is bad. Logic has little to do with it. If instead you take them to a strip club and get them drunk, they'll buy whatever you're selling.

Not judging, just observing. I've said it before, but Ad Hominem is where it's at. If folks generally like you, they'll generally agree with you. And vice versa. Being factually and logically correct helps, but it's not all that important. I think that's interesting in itself.

sordavie

Lol. Well, I do teach undergrads logic.

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xTYBALTx

Sordavie -

Isn't inductive logic the way that people talk in normal "argumentative" discourse? I still haven't read the Stanford link on informal logic yet, but I had always understood that to be the case.

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sordavie

In one sense yes and in another no. Yes, in the sense that people make what may be classified as inductive arguments all the time (they also make deductive ones). But, no, in the sense that people don't use the tools of inductive logic to analyze the strength of their arguments.

You might call inductive logic probabilistic logic. In essence, a strong inductive argument, as opposed to a weak one, has it that the conclusion is more likely to be true given the truth of the premises. In normal discourse, I take it people argue over what's likely to be true and what's likely to be false often. In that sense, they're using some sort of probablistic reasoning. Classic examples of an inductive argument go something like this:

Every crow in a random sampling is black, therefore, probably, every crow is black.

The sun rose today, yesterday, the day before yesterday, and everyday before that for at least as long as recorded human history. Therefore, the sun will rise tomorrow.

It's an open question whether the conclusions are justified given the premises. An inductive logic which encompasses these sorts of arguments should tell us whether they are good or bad.

However, modern inductive logic is fairly rigorous, even if there is dispute over a couple of conceptions of it. It seems to be very important in science. But, I don't think anybody in normal discourse has in mind probability theory, what the prior probabilities of their premises are, probablistic independence, or Bayes' Theorm when thinking about their reasoning.

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CingularDuality

That's a direct result of the dumbing down of society.

It used to be that "snake oil salesmen" were forced to travel from town to town in order to find a fresh group of gullible bumpkins to sweet talk. Now you see "As Seen On TV" crap in just about every store...

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TacticalGamer TX LAN/BBQ Veteran:

leejo

I don't see it that way. I'm suggesting that the social aspect of "arguing" deserves more emphasis more than I'm suggesting that people are stupid or careless. I'm not talking about snake oil salesmen. It does take a particular brand of almost willing suspension of disbelief to buy some things. Who buys something from a loud dude in a suit with question marks all over it? WTF?

I'm talking about more subtle arguments. Do I vote republican, democrat, other, or not at all? Do I shop at wal*mart or at some smelly hippy store with a bong display in the back? Do I use a mac or a PC? Dodge or Ford? I think that the vast majority of successful arguments are made by successful arguers who tap into social factors that drive decision-making.

Or maybe I'm still high from shopping at lunch.

sordavie

So, you're talking about the sophisticated snake oil salesmen? The sort that can even persuade the general population, not just Cingular's gullible bumpkins.

By the way, they used to have classes which taught that sort of skill. It was called Rhetoric. But, I guess you had some sort of counter movement who thought that sort of argumentation shouldn't be persuasive - the critical thinking movement. And, so now we have critical thinking classes rather than rhetoric classes.

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CingularDuality

Yes you are. There are practical difference between Ford and Chevy, but you'll often see that their advertising is selling nothing but snake oil. Sure they have some advertising that actually compares numbers that matter, but most of it is, as Sordavie pointed out, just sophisticated snake oil selling...

Same thing with politics or just about anything else...

The question is, are we dumber, or are the marketing folks smarter? Or both?

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TacticalGamer TX LAN/BBQ Veteran:

leejo

No, I'm not talking about snake oil salesmen. Stop saying that I am.

I don't agree that it's as simple as you claim: that either salesmen are smarter or we are stupider. I think there are strong emotional and social elements in decision making that good arguers tap into. I'm not calling these elements stupid.

How do people select mates? Did you whip out your tape measure and examine the your wife's and others' quantifyable "factors" in order to arrive at a rational conclusion about which potential mate was best? Did she with you?

I think that the vast majority of decisions aren't made in a strictly rational manner. None of the truly important decisions are made rationally to the exclusion of the emotional and social. There's a balance. I think that a good argument uses all the tools at its disposal and a poor arguer insists that anything irrational is stupid.

My friend the radiologist told me this, and he said you're an idiot frequently seen hanging around outside NAMBLA conventions.

sordavie

Leejo, it's quite true that not all decisions are made by thinking about whether there's a good or bad argument for making it. Probably most decisions are made this way. And, I agree that this is how many of them should be made. Let's rephrase this so it's more transparent. There are elements of decision making that have nothing to do with rational argumentation.

However, I do not see how you get from that fact to your thesis that there are elements of good argumentation which are not rational. The only way you can make this jump in reasoning is if you thought that all decision making was based on some argument or other. And that there are some appropriate decisions which contain non-rational elements. But, that's pretty implausible as you yourself mention in your examples. You say that the vast majority of decisions aren't made on a strictly rational basis. That just is to say that many decisions aren't made by argumentation. So, how are you going to infer from that there arestrong emotional and social elements in argumentation?

I think your more general mistake may be in the following inference: if an argument is persuasive, then it is a good argument.

While a poor arguer may indeed inssit that anything irrational is stupid, the good arguer realizes that there is more than just argumentation in decision making.

I take it even you agree that holding a gun to somebody's head and saying "if you don't do x then I'm gonna shot you, so you should do x" is not a good argument for this guy's doing x even though it's pretty darn persuasive. The gunman sure is using all the tools at his disposal to persuade his hostage to do x. But, surely the gunman is not a good arguer, nor is his argument a good one. That's an example of the informal fallacy appeal to force or threat.

On the other hand, you marry your wife because you love her. But, it's not as if there is an argument that goes like this:
Premise 1. I love my wife
Conclusion. Therefore I marry her.
I take it no such argument is made, and no such argument goes through the guy's head. This decision, based on whatever emotional ties you have, was not made by an argument. It's not as if there was an argument. It contained appeal to emotion. And, since the conclusion is good, or something, it was thus a good argument. Pretty implausible, even by your own desciption.

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