Burning point of bank statements and other curiousities

Concepts like distribution the early portions of section 2 I find difficult to illustrate with the same ease as the sections detailing, for example, informal fallacies as their subject. The visual element I find helpful though, where complex ideas or qualities don’t have to be understood solely from the choice of wording but additionally through the spacing and placement of shapes. Every little bit helps.

For this week I would still like to continue the valuable practice of relating “real life” examples or interactions to our discipline but will make a move toward more general philosophical problems that we nonetheless encounter in our attempts to quantify and understand our world logically.

Last night I was helping someone rebuild a fire in their fireplace. In a commendable use of social excesses she often uses junk mail to accelerate this process, so that, ideally, after strategically lining the warm coals with coupons, Victoria’s Secret catalogue pages, and bank statements, there is (if all goes well) a satisfying “pop” where most of the paper will simultaneously ignite and start the logs smoldering…

This struck me as an instance of changes in degree creating changes in quality. And that’s not even a bad joke. Maybe a fun question to muse upon this week would be: What are the implications that changes in degree can create such drastic changes in quality? Does this speak anything to the meaning of a quality, how entrenched these may or may not be, and to what extend (in that there are more flexible or conditional than we like to commonly think) do differing qualities truly distinguish us this being the case?

Food for thought to wash down some of that polite banter you are hopefully employing when discussing civil issues with your conservative-leaning uncle who made had too many Coors lights.

Gob gob.    

"people doing things to each other with chainsaws during tuperware parties..."

just to finish you off:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBArMmngVH4

Burt Bacharach writes my material

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkp7f8IxJNU

Being as we all had a blast applying Hurley to Thank You For Smoking here is a link to a scene from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. I put it up for what I saw as a fallacy of the composition on part of the couple regarding the amazingly unaccountable presence of the letter S in important thinkers. Plus its funny as hell. And its always great watching other cultures portraying characters conspicuously "American”.

Laughter is sometimes the only relief from the perplexity and pain of human existence and DEFINATLY the best relief from underwhelming mid-term performances. Enjoy.

Hurley in history

Robert Connors

History repeats itself

These nascent Wall Street occupying demonstrations go way beyond “howling in the wind” and will develop into a useful amalgamation of its many ethnic, religious, cultural, economic, and environmental components.

We, the 99 percent, have our own individual stories to tell and at a minimum, intuitively know that something is wrong with U.S. society mostly due to its seemingly unfettered capitalistic excesses. Unbridled greed is ripping the fabric of our society apart at an accelerated pace. Take a look at Michael Moore’s recent interviews on “Democracy Now” for further insight and discussion, for example.

A look at U.S., albeit local, history can reveal interesting comparisons to our present plight.

For example, in the late 1700s, farmers in Western Massachusetts were mostly uneducated, isolated and much-maligned and eventually rebelled against “the system” in what is called Shays Rebellion. They revolted against economic and legal unfairness in what has been called the second Revolutionary War. It’s worth researching the remarkable similarities between this post-Revolutionary War Shay’s Rebellion and today’s economic inequities. Many of these simple farmers were Revolutionary War soldiers who were previously told that they were fighting for economic and social justice. Then after the war, many discovered that they couldn’t pay their farm mortgages because they were never paid for their war efforts and some maintained that they were lied to about their farm mortgage payback terms.

However, the farmer’s active rebellion against the plutocracy of the Bostonbased elitist bankers, merchants and lawyers, was defeated by a moneyed militia. (The last significant battle was fought in Sheffield.) The well-heeled 1-percenters were quite afraid of what the masses could do to them and somewhat reluctantly agreed to write the U. S. Constitution into law as a result.

Be inspired by what these farmers ultimately achieved when you tell the plutocracy that you too are “mad as hell and won’t take it anymore.” In addition, think about whether present- day U. S. capitalism, featuring a Wall Street government, is approaching its natural earthly limits. The Western Massachusetts farmers of old were enraged then and the 99 percenters need to be awakened now to what is occurring in front of their own eyes.

Robert Connors lives in Canaan, N.Y.

It’s worth researching the remarkable similarities between post-Revolutionary War Shay’s Rebellion and today’s economic inequities.

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The exercises in Chapter 3.5 are mostly a collection of real-life excerpts that take us beyond Hurley’s well written examples and into a field where the fallacies are not as readily apparent or necessarily so singular. The piece above is an op-ed from the 10/16/11 Berkshire Eagle. Is the analogy between the 18^th century and today historically accurate, appropriate, and a strong one? Hurley spends much time discussing how our worldview and specifically our emotions influence our phrasing. What are our thoughts on the tone of his language? Is there a threshold or quality to emotive language where it then becomes manipulative? Of course, it would take all the fun out of writing if we had to always and automatically write in standard argument form… but worth considering. Also – are there appeals to people or force here? I feel blemishes of it but am unsure. Have a good weekend all!

Fallacies go global

The linguistic skills of public officials and their abilities to talk important or pressing events while saying relatively nothing about them is a common and frustrating experience. Our recent chapters on fallacies equip us with a language to identify these departures and better understand the discourse at work.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is on a tour of multiple Middle Eastern States right now, recently said the following:

Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State: "It’s a pleasure, once again, for me to welcome my colleague and counterpart, the foreign minister of Bahrain. He’s been here in consultations with many officials of our government, members of Congress, others who care deeply about Bahrain and our important relationship. And I’m looking forward to a wide-ranging, comprehensive discussion of our full agenda."

As this statement read, one can infer that US-Bahraini relations remain warm. Despite this, Bahrain is involved, as have been other Middle Eastern states in the news, in suppressing a resurgence in popular dissent that has by some press sources become deadly. Also in the background is a proposed $53 million dollar arms deal with the country that another State Department spokesperson said would help Bahrain improve its “external defenses” ( http://www.democracynow.org/2011/10/27/headlines#16 ).

I see the following fallacies in this diplomats language: Appeal to the People – Conscious of the curiosity of the international community regarding the crackdown and arms deal, this is a direct appeal to the people by the State Department in their attempt to portray the Bahraini government in favorable terms by describing close, “important relationship” and multi-level “consultations” with members of our own government. They may be a twinge of vanity here as well by placing the foreign minister in league with our elected leadership, who enjoy at least a bit of esteem, credibility, and character by coming to their powerful positions by generally valued, socially legitimate process. The reference to a “wide-ranging, comprehensive discussion of our full agenda” strikes me as a bit of a red herring as well, where while one aware if the specific current problems in Bahrain may infer that these could be part of the discussion, it obscures the perception of the country by brining now attention to what could be generally agreed on as an ongoing international concern.

Phase Four - Feedback welcomed

P1 - The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act is vague

P2 – It allows for excessive penalization

P3 – Its use of the work “terrorism” is inconsistent with legal and political norms

C1 – The AETA is delegitimized by its excesses and may be unconstitutional

P1 –The AETA is vague – Vagueness or broad constructions of legal language can be an asset when interpreting intent in a variety of contexts, but the ability of dissidents to understand the limitations of their constitutionally protected speech and the consequences when civil disobedience is employed is not one of them. The classification of non-violent physical obstruction or actions that may result in the loss of revenue without an injury to property or person could foreseeably be adapted to virtually all forms of traditional and non-traditional political protest. This would unjustly suppress protected forms of speech.

P2 – Excessive penalization – The 2006 law duplicates the 1992 Animal Enterprise Protection Act, whose provisions were enough to arrest, for example, activists on “animal enterprise terrorism” charges for running a website. The 1992 bill was, despite obvious effectiveness such as the arrest just mentioned, was claimed to be ineffectual – but the crimes enumerated in the 2006 legislation are already illegal acts, which could potentially lead to a compounding of charges under multiple statues.

P3 – Inconsistent use of term “terrorism” – The vast spectrum of expression and tactics that the language allows for prosecution and the choice of the term “terrorism” in the title of the bill provides for a diverse application of specific, but more relevantly politically and emotively charged word that sets a confusing and inappropriate standard. Even in its most “radical” manifestation, animal and environmental activism has ceased to go beyond politically motivated property destruction, in which great care is taken to ensure that no human and animal lives are harmed. This clearly evident principle sets these activists distinctly apart tactically, technically, and ideologically from the more general accepted domestic and international norms defining terrorism.

George Wallace blushes and other amazing feats

I found are discussion of cognitive and emotive language very fruitful. Becoming familiar with some methods and tools to deconstruct what language says and what it hides strikes me as infinitely useful. Although it would be tough to give Wallace a run for his money columnist and author Robert Spencer manages. His online blog http://www.jihadwatch.org/ is confoundingly popular. I didn’t paste the whole thing…just a little taste of his rhetoric. How many emotive and manipulative terms can YOU find? *

*anyone who endures long enough to find more than five such terms (and mine don’t count) gets a cigarette

Cheers fellow scholars

“ Muslims and their enablers, fans and dedicated propagandists around the world never tire of spreading the same lies, over and over again, about Islam. Sometimes the lies are baldly blatant, and other times the lies are conveyed via convenient and strategic omission of inconvenient facts. Hence we must never tire or flag in our own efforts to shine the harsh light of truth on Islam and the lies ceaselessly circulated by Islam's snake oil salesmen.

Today's bundle of media-vectored taqiyya comes courtesy of the Malaysian daily 'The Sun' and its piece entitled 'Humanistic Islam' (!). The unintentionally ironically-named article features the musings of a Singaporean-based Muslim author named Isa Kamari, who would probably pass for a 'moderate Muslim' in the mainstream media. Much of the aforementioned article centers on Kamari's thoughts on Malay-language literature, but it is Kamari's thoughts on Islam that deserve a thorough 'Islamophobic' debunking here…”

(you can find the rest and more at: http://www.jihadwatch.org/)

Abstraction attraction

As you all are assuredly painfully aware by now our introduction into logic has involved putting what we perceive as arguments into standardized or otherwise simplified forms to more readily determine their truthfulness and other meaningful qualities. I was profoundly struck this week by the notion that was illustrated to me via counter example method that a further abstraction from the content of something can better able one to determine its innate qualities (truthfulness, accuracy ect.). I propose for general musing: what are the implications of this seeming contradiction? While it seems quite reasonably to follow that this is an effective method it runs counter to me intuition that the effort of pursued familiarity with a subject and its content is the best approach to assessing its qualities of truthfulness ect. Does this register with anyone else?

I spy an argument - NYT on the working poor April 2011

New York Times 4/1/11

 Many Low Wage Jobs Seen as Failing to Meet Basic Needs by Motoko Rich

Using interviews with Wider Opportunities for Women and a report they had just published at the time of the article being written titles "The Basic Economic Security Tables for the Unites States" Rich proposes the following:

p1-  A single worker needs an income of $30,012 to cover basic expenses
p2 -This is close to three times the 2010 national poverty level for a single person
p3 - And twice the federal minimum wage
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c1- Therefor getting a job "may not be nearly enough for basic economic security."

Here's the link for the entire article (its pretty short) -  What do youz guys think?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/business/economy/01jobs.html?pagewanted=all