In the discussion over whether there is something scandalous about AEI's effort to commission analyses of the IPCC report and proposed climate report, more than one commenter sought to defend the use of ad hominem arguments. For instance, "Justin" commented:
The "ad hominen criticism is wrong" argument is thorougly erroneous, as I have discussed before. When the reader, either because the evidence is withheld or too complex for him to understand, on a particular challenged argument, is expected to agree by trusting or distrusting the source, an ad hominen attack/ab hominen defense is all you have to go by.In a bit of snark, I paraphrased this claim as "Ad hominem arguments are convenient for the lazy and uninformed." Even put this way, the claim has some truth, but all it means is that ad hominem evaluations have some utility as a time-saving, filtering device for those who lack the time or ability to evaluate the substance of a claim on its merits. It does not say anything at all about the truth or falsity of the claim itself. In other words, it does not establish that ad hominem arguments are valid arguments.
Put another way: While it may be reasonable in some contexts to say: "I trust information and arguments from X more than from Y because Y is [corrupt/bought/of the wrong ideology/etc.]", it is a logical fallacy to say "Y's argument is wrong" for the same reasons. The strength or weakness of Y's argument can be evaluated independently of Y's personal failings.
So, if I want to know something about the health risks of smoking, and lack the time, inclination, or ability to research the question for myself in any detail, I may decide to trust the word of a medical professional over that of a tobacco lobbyist — and I will make this decision because one is a medical professional who is concerned about encouraging good health and preventing sickness, while the other may have a financial incentive to gloss over the harms caused by his product. The truth or falsity of each person's claims, however, are independent of my evaluation. In this context, ad hominem information serves as a time-saving heuristic device, but that is all.
In the context of blog comment threads, I think it reasonable to presume that those who rely upon ad hominem arguments typically do so because they lack the time, inclination or ability to mount more substantive critiques. This is particularly the case where the argument is utilized for purposes beyond the dismissal of an appeal to authority. [After all, if one person in a debate wants to take the short-cut of appealing to an authority instead of spelling out an argument, it is reasonable to point out why the authority in question might not be so authoritative.] Blogs like this one aspire to be forums for reasoned discussion of various questions. Whether or not we succeed in our aims, that discussion requires engaging subjects on their merits, not resort to logical fallacies like the standard ad hominem.
Related Posts (on one page):
We have all sorts of epistemic shortcuts for uptake of human knowledge. In fact, unless you believe that a state of affairs is "objectively" knowable, then all human knowledge is a shortcut of one form or another. I'm not sure how an ad hominem attack is a "logical fallacy."
Sometimes the issue of credibility is important; sometimes it's not. Ad hominem attacks are less helpful in the the latter instance, but they're not "logical fallacies" in any sense that I understand that term. But because of the anonymous nature of much posting, I do find pieces of information about a person's online community identity/history helpful in conducting the sort of inevitable information triage is necessary to both participate meaningfully in an online discussion and, you know, hold a job.
The fallacy is entirely different from the proposition or maxim that one has reason to distrust or doubt the veracity of statements of untrustworthy sources. One does, and that fact has nothing to do with logical validity.
to admit that the objective state of affairs is not knowable is not the same as to justify ad hominem criticism. Some shortcuts are in effect shorter than others. Ad hominem is the McDonald's of reasoning. It will do when nothing else is available, but if you have any more time or means, you could do quite a bit better.
Anyone who has ever dealt with statistics knows that given the same data, often one can present that data in different ways to leave different impressions, and persuade others to come to different judgments concerning the meaning of the data. It cannot be said that any given presentation is "logically incorrect" even while one could say that a given presentation was deceptive, especially when other presentations are intentionally withheld or de-emphasized.
The presentation of statistics is only one area where the exercise of judgment independent of logic is appropriate. Other areas include selecting assumptions for analysis, selecting objectives to rate different outcomes, weighing different pieces of evidence in relation to each other to come to an overall conclusion, etc.
The bottom line is that one cannot just say that someone assigning a different weight to one of these things than you yourself would assign is verifiably false. Indeed, even among those who are honestly seeking nothing but the truth, their will be reasonable and rational differences as to matters of judgment. However, one can also notice certain patterns in how others make judgment calls or frame the data. For example, if X has a selfish material or ideological interest in coming to a certain conclusion (that is, they are not primarily concerned about the truth, regardless of the implications of truth for their agenda) we might observe a certain pattern to their discretionary judgment calls. For some reason, the person has made their discretionary judgment calls in a way that advances their agenda. Coincidence? One would have to be highly irrational and live outside the universe of humans to not recognize that, in many cases, when someone's discretionary judgment calls just happen to align with their agenda, that this is a mere coincidence. This is why reputation is so important.
Furthermore, it must be recognized that time is a scarce resource. A rational individual does not spend time and scarce resources on investigations that are probabilistically unlikely to yield anything of value. Typically, investigating the "scholarly work" of irreputable organizations only interested in advancing their agenda is not a rational use of time.
Actually, what's classically an ad hominem argument is one that _appeals_ to the opponent and his interests and vanities. Modern usage is the opposite.
There's this beautiful example of the classical one :
``Some time since I had a pleasant discussion with a university professor who held that faith and knowledge are in inverse ratio. As the area of knowledge enlarges, he claimed that of faith diminishes correspondingly. Once people accepted by faith what has since become known, and science has thus made faith superfluous in all such things. The professor admitted, however, it was not likely that knowledge would ever entirely banish faith; there would still remain some unexplored regions where faith could find room, and so preachers could still find a field for their activities. I came back at this professor with an argumentum ad hominem, "Is it true," said I, "that the more knowledge your wife has of you, the less faith she has in you? And is it true that the more you know of her, the less faith you have in her? In your home are faith and knowledge in inverse ratio? If so, I pity you both." It is not true that knowledge excludes faith. The more you know of your family physician, the more faith you have in him. The more soldiers know of their general, the greater their faith in him; else the army is in a bad way. The more we know of our friends the more faith we have in them. The greater a man’s knowledge of nature, the greater his faith in nature. Intelligent faith is not weaker than ignorant faith.'
The problem is that Adler used the noun "argument." Justin changed the noun to "criticism." Adler then used "evaluations" and "information." Both of them were, as Thales pointed out, talking about two different concepts, Justin as if they were identical twins and Adler as if they were fraternal twins.
If you know that August Sounding Institute X receives millions of dollars from Company Y and that company Y has a specific interest in a particular issue it is perfectly fair and reasonable to believe that Institute X's purported claims of being interested only in seeking truth through debate and scientific review are a boatload of crap and to base your opinions on that.
So while people who are affiliated with Institute X may not like it - that is reality and it does not reflect any defect of reasoning or initiative by those who point out these facts.
As courtroom lawyers know - the credibility of a witness is always at issue (and it is often THE issue.) Questioning the credibility of Institute X is perfectly appropriate.
It's my understanding that the sense in which you're using the term "ad hominem" is technically correct, but "disfavored" (whatever that means) by the linguistics people that "they" survey to capture contemporary usage.
That being said, I do recognize the distinction between "Don't listen to so and so because he's fat" and "Don't listen to so and so because he's not a lawyer." Don't get me wrong - I don't think whether or not someone is a lawyer is a good proxy for credibility on many (almost all) things, but some of the more desirable "ad hominem" information I can think of involves some of the Cully Stimson threads and information regarding those having familiarity with rules of professional ethics.
Comedy gold.
Sure. Just don't pretend it is a valid criticism on the merits.
The link in this case is not nearly as clear as the link between an actual tobacco lobbyist and what that lobbyist might say. I expect someone who is hired to work a very specific agenda to work that agenda, and I will check his arguments carefully against those of more neutral speakers. But my impression is that AEI is a much more diffuse organization than the tobacco lobby. Its center of gravity seems to be slightly to the right of this country's political center (and considerably to the right of political center in some other countries), but aside from that it seems to have a fairly wide range of voices. Therefore, slamming a project JUST because it comes out of AEI strikes me as unreasonable. There may be other good reasons to slam the project, of course, but AEI sponsorship alone seems insufficient.
You apparently like to engage in unreasonable interpretations. What I mean by "independent of logic" is not resolvable with reference to pure logic. Not that the judgment itself is not informed in anyway by logic, only that logic is not dispositive. Basically, what I mean by "independent of logic" is "partially independent of logic," in that there is discretion involved.
Taken as a whole, given the substance of the rest of my post, you should have attached a reasonable meaning to statement. Perhaps your lack of intellectual ability motivates you to attach an unreasonable meaning so that you have something to attack?
Sure. Just don't pretend it is a valid criticism on the merits.
I gather from this response that, actually, you don't understand the implications of my point, which is that there is not "objective criticism on the merits" that is not in some form an epistemic shortcut.
For example, consider the simple syllogism: this situation fits pattern A, pattern A always gives rise to inference Z. This situation therefore gives rise to inference Z.
If what Jonathan describes as an ad hominmem attack is nothing more than the assertion that the speaker lacks credibility in a particular area, I don't understand why that statement is a "logical fallacy" in any meaningful way that any other epistemic shortcut is not. It is a way of saying that "so and so is unlikely to have presented the merits accurately." Much like the syllogism is not an "actual" appraisal of the merits, it's "really" reasoning by analogy, and is, in effect, a statement about how likely a pattern resembling A is to give rise to inference Z.
Stated in this way, I don't think you can really draw a bright line between arguments that "go to the merits" and arguments that do not. Instead, it's just your run-of-the-mill difference in degree - that between good arguments and crappy ones.
That's a beautiful example of the logical fallacy of equivocation, since it uses the term "faith" in two entirely different senses, but not much else.
***
Usage Note: As the principal meaning of the preposition ad suggests, the homo of ad hominem was originally the person to whom an argument was addressed, not its subject. The phrase denoted an argument designed to appeal to the listener's emotions rather than to reason, as in the sentence The Republicans' evocation of pity for the small farmer struggling to maintain his property is a purely ad hominem argument for reducing inheritance taxes. This usage appears to be waning; only 37 percent of the Usage Panel finds this sentence acceptable. The phrase now chiefly describes an argument based on the failings of an adversary rather than on the merits of the case: Ad hominem attacks on one's opponent are a tried-and-true strategy for people who have a case that is weak. Ninety percent of the Panel finds this sentence acceptable. The expression now also has a looser use in referring to any personal attack, whether or not it is part of an argument, as in It isn't in the best interests of the nation for the press to attack him in this personal, ad hominem way. This use is acceptable to 65 percent of the Panel. · Ad hominem has also recently acquired a use as a noun denoting personal attacks, as in "Notwithstanding all the ad hominem, Gingrich insists that he and Panetta can work together" (Washington Post). This usage may raise some eyebrows, though it appears to be gaining ground in journalistic style. · A modern coinage patterned on ad hominem is ad feminam, as in "Its treatment of Nabokov and its ad feminam attack on his wife Vera often border on character assassination" (Simon Karlinsky). Though some would argue that this neologism is unnecessary because the Latin word homo refers to humans generically, rather than to the male sex, in some contexts ad feminam has a more specific meaning than ad hominem, being used to describe attacks on women as women or because they are women, as in "Their recourse ... to ad feminam attacks evidences the chilly climate for women's leadership on campus" (Donna M. Riley).
(1) Don't listen to Kovarsky because you hate Republicans (that's plainly the "emotional appeal" that the disfavored usage of "ad hominem" contemplates), and you shouldn't believe what Republicans say about anything.
(2) Don't listen as much to Kovarsky because his appraisal of the facts is less likely to be objective in that he always seems to find a way to get to the Republican answer.
The second phenomenon is not, I take it, particularly objectionable. As long as you don't mean to provoke people into distrust because they disagree with the particular ideology, I don't see the problem. All that you are saying is that Kovarsky's adherence to a pattern is just as likely to explain his Republican result as is any honest appraisal of the "merits" or "facts."
The first is an appeal to emotion; the second is a statement of probability.
While "absolute truth" might not be obtainable, I think that some epistemic shortcuts are shorter than others. An ad hominen attack is obviously extremely problematic when it leads one to avoid a substantive argument that deserves to be grappled with, rather than ignored. Indeed, ad hominen attacks, like biased research, can wrongly be used to advance a particular agenda rather than advance the search for truth.
The idea of "objective criticism on the merits" is not entirely empty. One should not just choose to believe whatever is convenient -- and that is a potential problem with ad hominen attacks. When misused, they can be used to dismiss that which should not be dismissed.
All that said, time is a scarce resource. And there is always the matter of discretionary judgment. When a person or organization has been shown to abuse their discretionary judgment in the direction of their own interest, whether ideological or pecuniary, rather than use it to get at the truth regardless of the consequences for their agenda, then a rational individual would rightly decide to spend less or no time analyzing their "contributions."
I will gladly concede that dismissing someone's work due to reputation is something different than "objective criticism on the merits." At the same time defend doing so on the basis of conserving a scarce resource, time, to analyze materials that are probabilistically more promising in bringing one closer to the truth.
If it's good enough for the courtroom, it's good enough for ordinary discourse, I would think.
Except that there is nothing unreasonable about my interpretation. Taken as a whole, your apology for deploying the ad hominem argument when scientists are expected to evaluate something on the merits is exactly equivalent to jettisoning logic. It's not called a logical fallacy for nothing, despite your elaborate justifications to the contrary.
You have been repeatedly making excuses and justifications for the ad hominem argument as if it were a form of rational criticism _on the merits_ of AEI solicited work. Do not now change your tune and claim that logic has only been "partially" jettisoned. Either the ad hominem move is logical with regards to the truth or falsity of AEI solicited work, or it isn't.
You're right. I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say, even in this explication.
What do you mean by all criticism on the merits is "in some form an epistemic shortcut"? Do they all rely on some form of logical fallacy? I don't follow.
However, when you write: "Much like the syllogism is not an "actual" appraisal of the merits . . ." I fail to see how very different this is from what I'm saying - that you're not really presenting an "actual" appraisal of the merits, therefore don't pretend that it is ACTUALLY an appraisal of the merits, as the likes of "viscus" do.
You obviously have no experience in scientific endeavor. This is shown by your simplistic binary thinking.
When one exercises their discretion, they can do so informed by facts and also logical inferences based on those facts. However, their conclusion is not logically determined. Thus, the logical inferences influence but do not determine the conclusion. That is, there conclusion is partially independent from logic. If you can't understand that, after I have laid it out in the simplest of terms... Well, I think we can all draw our own conclusions.
But not good enough for science.
The same notion is expressed in an earlier comment about questioning the credibility of a witness, as if science operates similarly by _testimony_. This couldn't be more point-missing.
Credibility is important in the courtroom only when there is no other way to reconstruct an event. When science - or forensics - is able to reconstruct that event or at least falsify a witness's account of events, we hold ourselves to that higher standard (in this example, forensics) and NOT to the credibility of the witness. In other words, the higher standard trumps whatever credibility the witness had before.
By insisting that credibility or its lack thereof should trump an empirically testable standard is to argue that credibility be a proxy for truth in place of evaluating a claim on its actual merits: an utterly irrational notion.
Science is not a battleground of dueling "credible" testimonies. If it were, no entrenched scientific theory would ever suffer refutation. Yet the history of science is littered with such examples of refutation - precisely because the standard is empirical reality, and NOT testimony. Those who advocate relaxing the logical rigour of science by jettisoning logic for lower standards are doing so for ideological reasons, and making a mockery of their own pronouncements of fidelity to the truth.
Laughable. You obviously failed classical logic 101.
Yes, logical inferences do not logically determine the conclusion. Simplistic thinking indeed.
I'd also like to spend one quick second on rebuttal. Adler writes,
"Even put this way, the claim has some truth, but all it means is that ad hominem evaluations have some utility as a time-saving, filtering device for those who lack the time or ability to evaluate the substance of a claim on its merits."
Sure, but unless we're given all the logic, knowledge, and time of the universe, and expect to be experts in everything, this "exception" is going to encompass a whole lot, particularly when dealing with very nuanced, tricky, and easily manipulable empirical questions. Indeed, since Professor Adler lacks not only a PhD in any sort of environmental science, but even a BS in anything, I would assume that Professor Adler relies on the ipse dixet of others quite a bit, even in those things he writes intensely about. Nobody expects Jonathan Adler's articles to be intense, empirical analysis of claims of the scientific effects of environmental regulations, or in fact anything else - that's why people use FOOTNOTES.
The same ad hominem could be applied to you (as a tu quoque) and you would have no possible rejoinder since your motivations are equally open to questioning. At the end of the day, it becomes a shouting match, a thoroughly irrational outcome.
But then I see that you already cede the point:
"I will gladly concede that dismissing someone's work due to reputation is something different than "objective criticism on the merits."
Which was what JHA and the less logically challenged amongst us were telling you to begin with.
Adler states at the end that ad hominen is a "logical fallacy," and as I have many friends in the ex-college-debater-society, he's correct in a technical sense.
But, in a real-world sense, that's a useless point to be correct on. As mentioned before, in the real world, we don't live in the fictional constructs of parliamentary debate. We have questions that are both empirical in nature and unknown (a Schrodinger's cat that is either alive or dead, if you will), we have personal constraints on our own capacity (both Kantian and practical), and we have very natural concerns that the smartest advocate will win at the expense of the correct one (anyone who thinks this concern is not valid even for some of the very most able judges should spend more time in a courtroom, particularly in either criminal cases or civil employment cases). And as a result, we have to make decisions that are not motivated by pure logic, but by other factors which are replacements for logic, and indeed are often *superior* replacements for logic. There's nothing wrong with utilizing those in decision-making, and as a corrollary, there's nothing wrong in utilizing them in advocacy, either.
And what does it mean to be "empirical and unknown"? What kind of oxymoron is that?
you're making one of the most critical mistakes people in our profession make: that questions must have "correct" answers that are thoroughly logical and subjectable to testing-via-analogy (or fallacy). For a variety of reasons, both obvious and more nuanced, this assumption is often wrong. Don't make the two mistake some lawyers subsequently make - 1) that an answre which is wrong but usuable is better than an admission that there is no answers which are correct and usable, and 2) that a criticism has flaws, which may not be relevant to the criticism itself, means that one does not have to address or determine whether the original assumption holds under that criticism. In other words, just because something, such as ab hominen defenses or attacks is "messy," (and admittedly so), does not make something stand up in the face of an explanation why in a particular situation, the criticism is relevant (or even dispositive).
If an answer is either 1 or 0, the chances of each are not 50%. The chance of one is 100% and the chance of the other is 0%, and we do not know which is which. If we lack any other information, we may as a useful proxy give "50%" to each odds, but this is a proxy, and not reality - the number, having already been decided, is not a function of probability.
On the other hand, anyone who gives authoritative deference to a unknown commentator on a blog thread is acting irrationally in my view. (The assumption in the last thread seemed to be that some people would give deference to an unknown Ted Frank's views -- unless they found out that he is affiliated with AEI.) Credibility is only relevant if one is being asked to trust the writer based on his authority. I may be persuaded by an unknown authors' views, but if so it isn't because I place authoritative trust in such a person (and I would not think differently if it were shown that the author was biased); rather, it is because the arguement was independently persuasive.
I suggest that any reasonable reader who doesn't have enough time, expertise or confidence to engage an argument in a de novo review on the merits (and therefore come to a viewpoint independent of the credibility of who it is making the argument), should find a more reliable source than an unknown commentor in a blog thread as a source of trusted judgment.
"Blogs like this one aspire to be forums for reasoned discussion of various questions."
Since I was defending Elliot Reed's position that we should discount a study funded by AEI, and neither Elliot nor I was using this to support or rebut anybody's blog post, I'd like to think that such a criticism is irrelevant to my (or Elliot Reed's) original position.
It is a factor--not necessarily a dominant factor, but a factor; and the success or not of the expert's explanation of the payment (often as not a simple, "Look, I don't work for free. The plaintiff (or defendant) wanted me to look into this stuff and reach some conclusion, and that's what I charged. I told them that I'd reach my own conclusion, and I did, and the amount I was paid for the time I spent had nothing to do with my conclusion.") But the jury is entitled to take the payment into account, together with whatever they think of the explanation.
In the AEI case, the payment issue seems silly--the U.N. paid the experts who did its report, after all. But if the jurors out there wondering about global warming feel the explanation is insufficient, there is nothing inherently wrong with doing so, even if their basis for doing so is pretty weak.
Laughable. You obviously failed classical logic 101.
I'm not aware of any split within "logic," of which "classical" is a strain. In fact I generally thought that the very nature of "logic" necessitates that it be taught as an ahistorical phenomenon.
But you're obviously the smartiest.
I'm quite smart if I do say so myself. ;-)
I obviously meant "probabilistically" you have not engaged in scientific endeavor. By making such a tentative assumption, I am actually giving you the benefit of the doubt, because otherwise your misunderstanding of how logic fits in with judgment within scientific endeavor would be absolutely inexcusable. You don't seem to understand that logic can be part of and influence a conclusion, but at the same time not consist of the entirety of a conclusion that also involves discretionary judgment. An example of a discretionary judgment is how much weight to give a particular piece of evidence, when there is no purely non-discretionary means of assigning a particular weight.
Overall, you strike me as an unreasonable individual. Are you going to investigate every claim made by every individual without regard to reputation? I hope you have an infinite amount of time then.
You apparently aren't even smart enough to address the problem of allocating time. Which was brought up not only by me, but other commenters as well. This is not suprising, given your inability to even imagine a conclusion that is partially based on logic, and partially based on judgment. (That is not a very advanced idea, but still you don't get it. Amazing.) Not to mention your tendency towards binary thinking and false dichotomies.
By the way, your setting up a false dichotomy earlier was a classic logical fallacy. You wrote: "Either the ad hominem move is logical with regards to the truth or falsity of AEI solicited work, or it isn't."
If you are so skilled in the use of logic, how could you make such an obvious false dichotomy which could have been dispelled with a minimal amount of logical thinking. It is not hard to think of situations where a conclusion involves logic, but is not wholely determined by it. Yet you failed to think of it and instead exhibited binary thinking and made a false dichotomy.
You are a truly sloppy thinker.
And yet when asked to provide a reason as to why your discretionary judgment is unbiased, as opposed to that of your interlocutors, you fail to answer. In other words, this so-called "discretion" is arbitrary: your biases would suffice for the "discretion". If it ISN'T arbitrary, then there is some objective standard of choosing between weightages involved, and logic applies. Which is it?
If the latter, you concede the point once again.
If the former, the tu quoque applies (because you can't dispute it, having accepted the validity of ad hominem arguments) and you are no better than those you excoriate.
Either way, you lose.
No. But I never said I would. Indeed, I stated quite clearly that such epistemic shortcuts were fine - as long as you do not pretend that they are an evaluation on the merits. You've been conflating this shortcut with an actual evaluation of the merits repeatedly - now THAT's sloppy thinking. How many times do you need to be corrected again? I'm frankly tired of your logically confused ramblings.
Wow. Personal attack after personal attack. Did I touch a nerve?
If you had paid attention at all, you would have realised that this has already been addressed in the previous comments. Once again: do not conflate a logically invalid time-saving device with an _actual_ evaluation of the work as regards its merits.
As for the amusing self-contradictory babble about a conclusion that is "not logically determined" even when you logically infer the conclusion - I hope you forgive me if I LOL because you betray a logical illiteracy so basic and dire it is hard to believe that you're really this obtuse. If it is a valid logical inference, it is logically "determined" in logic. The rules are quite clear, don't muddy them with your half-baked understanding of the subject.
Lastly, you mention a false dichotomy and you claim that the statement "either an ad hominem is a logically invalid argument, or it isn't" is a false dichotomy.
Wrong.
Not only is this assertion a hysterical error that would leave you shame-faced in a logic 101 class - it is also a laughable conflation of a false dichotomy with the law of the excluded middle (either p or not-p). My statement had the form of (p v ~p) - a tautology that is necessarily true by virtue of its logical form in classical logic. Indeed, it is one of the *fundamental* laws of classical logic. And here you are denying it. Congratulations on once again demonstrating your obvious cluelessness in the subject.
As for my lack of imagination - hardly. The LEM may be denied in non-classical logics, but 1. this is not one of those instances 2. that's not what you're talking about since you barely even grok elementary logic let alone non-classical logics and 3. the logical fallacy in question has nothing to do the denial of LEM.
I'm sure your local community college teaches a critical thinking class or two. Please enrol to spare yourself further embarrassment. Thank you.
You are obviously not very intelligent. To establish that, let us analyze your statement and the reasonable implications of that statement.
"Either the ad hominem move is logical with regards to the truth or falsity of AEI solicited work, or it isn't."
This excludes the possibility that reputation is partially logically related to truth or falsity. Which, in fact, would be my position. And it was in fact the position you were responding to.
The problem with saying that the statement is true is that it is not completely true. The problem with saying the statement is false, is that it is not completely false.
Formally, a statement that is partially false is considered false. But obviously, it is more accurate to differentiate between the parts of the statement that are true and the parts of the statement are false.
Let:
P = it is raining today and it is cloudy today.
R = it is raining today.
C = it is cloudy today.
Assume:
It is raining today.
It is not cloudy today.
Then formally ~P. Due to your wonderful tautology.
But, this is an example of what we call binary thinking. More accurately, we would move away from the binary. To say either P or ~P is a false dichotomy. Because P is partially true. It is more accurate to say R &~C than it is to simply say ~P. To say R &~C obviously conveys more information than saying ~P. Thus, saying R &~C is superior, when the truth of the individual components that make up P is relevant. As it is here.
So much for your inferior tautologies. I will take my information rich precision, thank you very much.
Oh but, you merely repeat the same logical problem again in your response. Here we go...
So, everything is either completely determined by logic or it is arbitrary? Brilliant. Simply brilliant.
Could it be that something is partially determined, but not totally determined by logic and facts? Could it be that you have some discretion, but not total discretion in judgment? Could it be that your discretion is constrained, but not totally determined by logic and facts? Or is that too complex for your tiny mind to grasp.
If only it could be P or ~P. Only then will you feel comfortable.
"do not conflate a logically invalid time-saving device..."
How is saving time logically invalid? Maybe your rat-like mind can explain.
Oh, and then this is a beauty. You claim:
But previously, you quoted me in a previous post as saying:
So, apparently, despite what I explicitly said in an earlier post, with no logical contradictions in any post, you somehow manage to attribute two contradictory positions to me. Should we do with the quote, or your dishonest assertion that I am conflating an objective criticism on the merits with a rational decision not to waste time reading the work of hackish organizations and individuals? I say we go with the quote, because the position you have in your last comment is entirely made up by you. When one try's to construct strawmen, that is often, but not always a sign of one's own intellectual weakness.
Well, at least you have conceded that my position is ultimately correct, and the position advanced by Adler is incorrect.
You write:
"I stated quite clearly that such epistemic shortcuts were fine."
Good. We agree on something. I am glad that you concede that it is entirely rational to ignore arguments sponsored by hackish and disreputable organizations like AEI. I am pleased. You have conceded the major point that I was arguing.
Wow. All those logic classes have served you well. You not only conceded the most important point, but to top it off you have also embarassed yourself with binary thinking and false dichotomies.
Brilliant. I thank you for your contributions to my argument, however unintended.
That's an equivocation, not an Ad hominem. This example conflates 2 common meanings of the term 'faith'. Firstly faith based on experience, empirical evidence and reasoning - as in I have faith that the sun will come up in the morning, or my wife will collect the kids from school today. This verses the other religious kind of 'faith', whereby something is held to be true, not by reason or empirical evidence, but rather because it has been handed down as religious dogma, revealed by some personal 'revelation' experience or written in scriptures. It is to be true by 'faith' despite, lack of evidence. Indeed this 'believing by faith', in the face of lack of evidence is typically held to be a virtue; especially in the Christian tradition!
..and hell, after all, it did come from The Guardian!
Honestly, the assertion that AEI is always and everywhere biased in favor of oil companies is not a data point to be used to support an argument. It's something that needs to be demonstrated, and various people on various threads have attempted to do so by bringing in more information. That's all well and good, but they haven't convinced me yet. So I'll wait for more information, maybe even the report itself.
The alleged link between AEI and the oil companies is simply too weak to resolve the question without further information. This is unlike (for example) the link between the public relations departments of those oil companies and the corporate management that pays their salaries. In the latter case, an ad hominem attack would probably be fine. But it isn't sufficient here.
This makes me especially sceptical of Guardian claims and insinuations; especially when it comes to a topic related to stuff that touches on their clear political leanings – By leanings I mean specifically the Guardian being: anti US (especially anti Bush and anti Republican), pro EC, pro UN, distinctly left wing economically, soft on Islamic fascism, pro 'statism', pro US/ Coalition defeat in Iraq, anti Israeli, anti Jewish, pro Palestinian, pro Kyoto treaty, pro anthropomorphic climate change as the major explanation for global warming etcetera....as it happens, all pretty much the same as the BBC, peas in a pod as I were.
That is not to say that it follows that any article or point made by the Guardian in support of their known positions above, or critiquing the arguments of those who hold a counter positions, is by definition necessarily factually wrong. Taking that as an actual argument in and of itself, would be to commit the Genetic fallacy. Clearly arguments must be judged on their merits, mindful of course that one must know enough of the topic at hand to be aware of germane omissions (wilful or otherwise).
That said, given awareness of the agenda of the Guardian and their ‘form’, gives me some guidance as to where it would be prudent to turn-up the sensitivity on my scepticism 'radar' and look especially hard at the Guardian’s arguments and the merits of any counter arguments. This AEI business is one such occasion.
Perhaps ironically, given my above argument, I am especially sceptical when arguments made by the Guardian, or indeed anyone, focus on Ad hominems, appeals to authority and as in this case, the genesis of something or other, rather than the substantive points and arguments made. This seems to be the case with this AEI business, where it touches on a ‘hot topic’ that pushes the Guardian’s ‘hot’ buttons, being contrary to what is clearly the paper’s ‘received wisdom’. I read this sort of stuff sub vocalising the mantra: ‘Yes but you’re not addressing the points, not drilling into the detail, you’re just trying to rubbish them, to discredit them”.
As a general point, I only wish that the quality of debate on the subject of climate change was a whole lot better, that those that seek to make cases that impinge on public policy, that they would make much better factual and science based arguments less ridden with non sequitus than seems, all too often, to be the case.
"Either P or Q" and asserting "P or Q" only when there are one or more other possibilities R, S, T, and so on
And this is the law of the excluded middle:
"Either P or not-P". (Either P is true or false.)
Explore the difference between the two, and then tell me whether a statement that says "either the ad hominem is valid or not-valid" conforms to the LEM, or to a false dichotomy.
(To anyone with half a brain, the answer is obvious.)
Confusing the two, "viscus" then calls me out for what he erroneously thinks is a logical fallacy. Outrageous ignorance.
As if that wasn't bad enough, he has the gall to call me a sloppy thinker (!) after his butchering of logic at the altar of incompetence.
Shameless beyond parody.
Yes "viscus", that would be your position obviously, which is why you failed logic 101. Of course that possibility is excluded: It is logically invalid. And there are plenty of counter-examples that show that it is invalid. You can't get from "A has a poor reputation" to "Proposition X by A is false" because there are plenty of non-credible persons who have uttered true propositions.
This is elementary.
Hilarious. The problem is now apparently the law of non-contradiction! He's denying it! lol!
Why do you compound your own ignorance?
Do you have any more laws of logic to deny? I like how I've reduced you to denying even the basic laws of logic just to justify your illogicality. It must be hard on you to be so incoherent. But of course, incoherence doesn't bother you - for you may at any time insist that a statement is both partially true and partially false, while deny that it is either true or false. A kind of immunizing strategem that jettisons logic when it suits you. In short: you've descended into rejecting logic itself just to maintain your inconsistencies.
And no, it's no use saying that I'm 'excluding the possibility that logical inconsistencies are fine!' Which is precisely what you're attempting to do now with:
'A proposition is neither completely true or false, but true AND false'. lol! You're neither correct or incorrect, but both correct and incorrect? Think about it before you humiliate yourself in your next critical thinking class.
lol! Abject hebetudinous nonsense. P is NOT partially true. P is simply FALSE you logic-mangling buffoon!
You say let (R &C) be P. From De Morgan's:
~P ⇔ ~R or ~C
(Not-P if and only if not-R or not-C.)
~C
(Not-C.)
:. ~P
(Therefore not-P.)
In other words, either not-R or not-C is enough to show that P is false. P is true IF AND ONLY IF both its constituents are true. So there is no P and ~P both at once you stubborn, logic-resistant mule. Classical logic is truth-functional, don't rewrite the rules as and when you like.
These are also basic logical rules of inference. Do not be so proud of your ignorance.
1. Except tautologies are necessarily true in logic. So much for the rules of logic, eh?
2. No one is saying that you can't say R &~C. What is being drummed into your thick skull is that you cannot say R &~C AND say that P is true. As demonstrated above, ~C renders P false. No ifs or buts or "partially true" if logic is to remain truth-functional. Stop arbitrarily breaking the rules of logic everytime you're cornered.
No. Learn to read. Either logic applies, in which case the ad hominem fallacy is logically unsound, or your "discretion" is arbitrary and logic would not apply and anything goes: a question of consistency. Are you logically consistent or not?
Why not answer your own question, and mine? I've asking this for the third time so stop restating it without answering it: WHAT is this "discretion" and what makes YOUR "discretion" unbiased whereas the "discretions" of others are biased? Your ideological opponents can likewise claim to have some "discretion" - indeed, you claim that they operate in this penumbra while advancing their own agenda. What makes YOU think you're not open to the same charge? And open to the same ad hominem tactic?
No answer. Because you can't answer. Because you know that to legitimize and open yourself to the same tactic would mean being reduced to a shouting match of ad hominem attacks.
Finally:
Hard to believe you're this dimwitted. I said "you've been" making the same conflation for some time now until you ceded the point. And funnily enough, after you've ceded the point, you STILL continue to make the same conflation, thereby contradicting yourself:
Confused much?
lol, stop desperately grasping at straws. No one "conceded that your position is ultimately correct". Your position - the repeated conflations, tissue of logical confusions, and plain ignorance of basic rules of logic is hopelessly incorrect.
Do not now change your tune and pretend that all you were saying was that epistemic shortcuts were fine in a non-logical manner: you were claiming much more than that - that they _logically_ go to the truth or falsity of AEI-solicited work. In other words, pretending that ad hominems were logically sound.
In fact, my second comment to Kovarsky in this thread was a succinct precis of my position:
"Sure. Just don't pretend it is a valid criticism on the merits."
In other words, using the shortcut because you're too lazy or time-challenged is fine, just don't pretend it is logically sound.
Except that is not what I said. I said it was fine if you took such shortcuts: just don't pretend that it is logically sound, or logically valid, or rational.
Do you have reading comprehension problems in addition to poor reasoning skills? Pity. You're obviously not very intelligent.
Prediction: you'll come storming back, propeller hat a-twirling, and STILL not take that logic class I recommended. Go on, amaze me.
Not credible, these people. Ergo we can "logically" conclude that what they say is false and logically unsound.
We can therefore safely ignore arguments from hackish and disreputable persons like "viscus" whose repeated mispellings of ad hominem demonstrate incompetence and lack of credible knowledge in the subject.
And the amusing thing is he can't deny it, for to do so would be to refute himself.
I tend to agree with your assessment of the Guardian overall, but even they occasionally make a bit of sense. Not often, and not in this instance, but once in a while. So they would be closer to my hypothetical public relations executive for the oil company, although perhaps not all the way out to that extreme.
Despite my previous statements about the AEI, their past track record leads me to make one prediction about where this current climate change project will come out -- they won't take the extreme, "REVERSE THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION OR WE ALL DIE NOW!" position. They aren't like that. If you think that's the only proper position on global warming, you're gonna hate whatever AEI comes up with. An ad hominem (or other problematic) attack may seem reasonable if that's your starting point, although even then I fail to see the point to bringing in the oil company connection. But if you are starting with the idea that there's an interesting problem out there that calls for creative solutions -- many of which will have to involve the private sector -- ideas are as likely to come from AEI as from anywhere else.
Here's an example of a situation where both logic and judgement come into play. Assume the price of a stock can be determined by the following:
price = current price + (growth in EPS + change in public sentiment + dividend growth)
The overall equation is based on logic but the individual variables are based on both logic and judgement. For example, growth in EPS can be calculated based on past growth, which is known, and an assumption of how well a new product which will sell, which can be based on judgement and a look at how well similar products have sold.
Now say that analyst A predicts a 5% growth and analyst B predicts 15% growth. Which do you listen to? Or do u split the middle and assume 10% growth? If you do it yourself then what makes your judgement better than theirs? Now suppose you find out analyst B owns a major stake in the company and stands to make a fortune if it goes up. He has a reason for hyping the stock and overestimating his growth. To be fair it is possible that has not done either of these things. Are you going to trust his judgement equally to analyst A who does not stand to make any money?
This sort of things happens all the time in science and related fields. It occurs every time a scientist decides how much weight to give to a variable (I assumed they were all equal, but EPS may have a greater impact than the other two), which variables to include (I didn't include anything about competitors in my estimation), which people to listen too (I ignored analysts C and D and my next door neighbor), which methodology to use (I could just as easily have performed a technical analysis), etc.. All of these judgement calls have an impact on my conclusions and as a result my reasoning for making the judgement call is open to debate.
It is therefore necessary to know a person's biases and hidden agenda to fairly assess the worth of their work. To claim otherwise is to remove yourself from the real world. These biases may not have any effect, may be irrelevant or be balanced out by competing biases on the other side. But they may not be. In the real world people act on their biases all the time. you personally have done this when you make claims regarding "the Left".
Does this mean that it is proper to exclude someone's argument based solely on who they are? No. But it is a reason to be more skeptical of their claims when value judgements have been made. (Also because it would necessitate excluding everyone's argument which would be ridiculous.) In an ideal world where everyone has all the information and unlimited time this wouldn't be necessary.
First, I did not make any claims "regarding the Left". Please do not invent a remark I did not make.
Second, "viscus" is indeed mixing up his arguments, and nobody is mangling them but himself. The logical rules aren't mine and I didn't invent them. To imply that I'm somehow unfairly forcing him to respect my (?) rules of logic is just a rhetorical feint - he's not respecting the rules of logic, period.
Now to the substance of your post. You write:
Incorrect. Not only is it not "necessary", it is a logical fallacy of the first order. You're simply repeating a misunderstanding that others have made before: that there is a logical relation between the truth of a proposition, and the credibility of the person proposing it. As previously mentioned, this is easily refuted by a bevy of counterexamples of non-credible people who often tell the truth. It determines nothing.
Logic, as someone once remarked, is the study of necessary inference; and logical relations the study of truth-preserving derivations between propositions. You come close to the kernel of this understanding when you say that:
Indeed: your "judgement" has no effect, logically speaking, on the truth value of either analyst's conclusion. Your intuition may be incidentally correct, or it may be wrong. It is quite irrelevant, since analyst A may be biased and still be right. There is no notion of logical necessity involved - hence its invalidity as a mode of argument (why? you ask. And this is important - validity is defined thus: an argument is valid if and only if it is impossible for its premises to be true and the conclusion false).
To put it another way: the bias doesn't logically determine anything.
Do you now see why the ad hominem is logically invalid and strictly so? (Again, invalidity has a strict definitional sense in logic - it isn't merely a pejorative.)
Perhaps if you take the time to understand this, we wouldn't be talking past each other (and I understand that logic can sometimes be very un-intuitive. That however, doesn't make your intuitive grasp of informal reasoning any less in error when you DO make such an error).
Hence my comment that we ought not to pretend that such an ad hominem move is logically valid. It isn't. It is no more logical than the detective following a hunch. You may do it - and you may even be right. But it isn't "logical" nor does it ACTUALLY determine the truth of that hunch. As JHA mentioned - these are logically independent of each other, just to reiterate the point once more.
Quite apart from all this, there is also the point of the ad hominem being worse than worthless with regards to the AEI debate. You mention that
Exactly. And what is to stop your ideological opponents from using the same attacks on your ideological bias and your credibility to come to their own conclusions? You're equally open to the same charge. And the debate quickly degenerates into an ad hominem farce from both sides, making it a worse than useless argument.
This is why those who try to justify the ad hominem move as "valid" are mistaken not just on one but two levels: on the usefulness or pragmatic level (especially as it relates to politicized debates), and the logical level.
Logik macht frei!
P = It is raining and it is cloudy tody.
R = It is raining today.
C = It is cloudy today.
Assume:
It is not raining today.
It is cloudy today.
Then, we could say ~P.
Do you disagree so far, advisory opinion? To say ~P would be a true statement.
We could also say: ~R &C.
To say ~R &C would be a true statement.
Any disagreements so far?
Of the two true statements, ~P versus ~R &C the true statement ~R &C provides more information than ~P.
Why? Because, if I tell you ~P, all of the following could be true.
~R &~C
~R &C
R &~C
So, it follows that saying ~R &C provides more information than saying ~P alone, because it tells us which of these possibilities in fact produced ~P.
Any disagreements so far??
Thus, if the truth of R &C is relevant, we could say that saying ~R &C is superior to saying only ~P.
Any problems yet?
When I say the statement P Is partially true and partially false, obviously, I do not mean that in a "formal" sense. Formally, P is false. But you are probably to dumb to move away from formal definitions and move to reasonable interpretations of what is said. What is meant by the statement that P is partially true and partially false is that of the subcomponents that make up P, namely in this case R and C, some are true and some are false. And to simply say that P is false would be to fail to communicate this reality.
Do you take issue with an insistence of greater precision?
Only one conclusion is possible. Advisory opinion is an inflexible and limited thinker, apparently incapable of reasonable interpretations. He must shove everything into his narrow box, irresponsibly assuming that whenever someone uses a word, they attach a particular meaning that mangles the argument, when a reasonable interpretation would attach a reasonable meaning and lead to reasonable results.
As Brian K said about advisory opinion above, "your mangling his argument to force it to fit to your logical rules."
My question. Is advisory opinion aware of his mangling? Which is it. Is he (1) simply stupid, or (2) dishonest? (Oh wait, this is a true false dichotomy, isn't it. He could be insane or retarded or simply impractical...)
The only thing that Brian K said that I object to is that I am "mixing up my terms." When in fact, I have no particular obligation to use a particular definition, when other reasonable definitions are perfectly understandable by anyone with reasonable intelligence.
If my terminology is not understandable by advisory opinion and those of his ilk, but is understandable by reasonably intelligent people, I would consider that a feature, not a bug.
Note: This is definitely my last response to advisory opinion, unless by some miracle he actually says something that is not blatantly and obviously wrong. There is definitely diminishing marginal returns to arguing with someone who either willfully or stupidly mangles your meaning.
Please open the dictionary. What you will find are "multiple definitions" for words. Indicating that their is no dogmatic truth concerning the meaning of a particular word. What you have done, and which Brian K rightly observed, is adopt unreasonable definitions of the words I have used. The "rules of logic" do not tell you what definitions to attach to a particular usage of a given word. You have consistently chosen poor definitions that mangled my meaning, in the face of alternative definitions which would not have lead you to absurd results. Which demonstrates poor judgment on your part.
Second of all, "ab" means "from" in latin, as opposed to "ad," which means "at" or "to," and thus a defense by relying on a person would not be "ad" but "ab," whether the usage is sufficiently common for your tastss or not.
Good Point. My apologies.
Advisory Opinion:
You are making the fatal flaw that there is an objective truth in every circumstance and that it can be knowable beforehand. (there are others but this is the one I'll address) I'll qualify this statement through the use of examples:
1) Is global warming real? there is one "true" answer - either yes or no (Even in this case there is no true answer as "warming" needs to be defined which is not an easy task given variations in global temperature). If yes, then by how much will the earth warm? there is a single true answer to that that can only be known after the fact. How much warming is too much? At what point should we do something about it? What should we do about it? Should we do something about it? None of those questions have a single "true" answer. The "truth" is relative to the person. A bleeding heart liberal environmentalist would say "any warming is too much" while a heartless conservative oil company CEO would say "there's no such thing as global warming." Would you treat both opinions with the same regard as that of a scientist who has spent 10 years studying the phenomena?
2) There may be an objectively true way to determine if someone is purely white or purely black, but what about the case of mixed origin? Is the child of a purely white and purely black person white or black? What if the ancestor in question was a great grandparent? Who determines what the cut off is? there isn't some objective way of assigning color and hence there is no "truth". It is a judgement made by the person and there biases will affect that judgement.
Classical logic works very well when the truth of statements can be assessed. This however is there biggest limitation to the real world situations. Truth is not always knowable, assuming it exists. You are right that in classical logic ad hominem attacks are invalid (using the classical logic definition of the word). But we are not talking about classical logic. We are talking about real world debates made by real people with real motivations. This is why I accused you of mangling Viscus's argument.
I never claimed otherwise. I would however phrase it this way "analyst A is biased and may still be right" Everyone has biases but they may not necessarily have any impact on his conclusions. However you can't know this unless you know his biases. The above stated environmentalist is never going to believe that the right thing to do may be to build a house on that field while the CEO would never going to believe that tripling taxes on oil is the right thing to do. Both cases may be "right" but their individual biases will never let them see that.
What is true? What is false? How can you tell? Who decides? Classical logic fails in the above cases.
Nothing. I never claimed I was above reproach. Knowing the biases of both sides allows an observer to assess the situation and assign weights to each side's arguments. (According to his biases. It never ends, but that is not a valid (not in the classical logic sense, but might be) argument against something.) At some point weights will be assigned that the majority of the people can agree on and a decision will be made or a conclusion will be reached.
To illustrate this point I'll use my stock analyst example. Suppose both analysts accuse each other of manipulating growth estimates. Analyst A accuses analyst B of overestimating the growth because B owns a long position on it. B accuses A of underestimating growth because A owns a short position on the stock. They both have biases that on the surface appear to cancel each other out and that you should assume a growth of 10%. If you look a little further you might realize that 90% of analyst B portfolio is in that one stock while only 2% of analyst A portfolio is. you can reasonably infer that B has a much greater incentive to manipulate the results (knowingly or unknowingly) and in the absence of any other information (which you rarely have in real life) you may conclude that the stock price will rise 6.5%. The only way to assess which analyst gave the "true" answer is after the fact which is 1) only possible in certain circumstances and 2) worthless as it can't help you make any decisions.
AO, you've been (successfully) trolled.
Viscus, +1. How wonderfully meta...
Okay, butr in the real world, isn't there a point beyond which a contributor's biases on an issue become so suspect that those seeking fruitful exchange can discount your views.
Sure, the clock that stopped at 12:08 is correct just after the start of the lunch hour and shortly after midnight, but am I not justified in consideriing the clock's unreliability as a timepiece at all other times of day when deciding whether to consider its evidence pertaining to the question of whether it is time to start cooking dinner?
The Guardian's note about Exxon-Mobil's association with AEI was sloppy and unecessary. The AEI is as predictable as the stopped clock: The studies they ultimately publish will all in one way or another support the notina that an unfettered free market is the best way to fight global warming. Papers written to a predetermined conclusion (or selected for publication because they can in context be bent to support that conclusion) may in fact be true once in a while, but they are, like the stopped clock, always suspect, even when they are true.
The deep irony in this whole discussion is that the AEI's initial letters soliciting articles for this project centered on an ad hominem attack on the IPCC (as quoted on the initial post in this thread)--that it was "susceptible to self-selection bias in its personnel, resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent, and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work of the complete Working Group reports." And yet it is The Guardian that get hauled over the coals for ad hominem attacks. Go figure.
My suspicion is that some people connected to the summary are spinners and some are not. The following is from a spiked-online.com piece I mentioned on the first thread yesterday. The Achim Steiner mentioned is apparently from the United Nations Environment Program, and a cofounder of IPCC. The guy sure seems to know how the news cycle works.
****************
"In this sense, the real consensus on climate change today is more political than scientific. It is a consensus that privileges emotional fears of loss, and which is based on apocalyptic thinking and doubt about humanity’s achievements and capabilities.
Today’s ‘consensus’ is extended, through media campaigns around something like the IPCC’s summary, into the language of climate catastrophe. On 2 February, BBC1’s One O’Clock News was typically alarmist, giving much airtime to a spokesperson from Friends of the Earth. Later, the same channel’s Ten O’Clock News led with a lengthy doom-laden report from around the world. Environment and science correspondent David Shukman described the Earth as ‘very fragile’, warning that it could ‘spiral out of control’ – an interesting concept! There would be a ‘devastating effect’ on the world, he said.
None of these phrases occur in the IPCC summary. Still, over on BBC2’s Newsnight, Gavin Esler announced that ‘2,500 experts agree – climate change could result in catastrophe’. Leaving aside the figure of 2,500 and that interesting word ‘could’, this could only suggest that the summary really talked about catastrophe. But it doesn’t.
Newsnight’s main report was from science editor Susan Watts, who informed us that ‘scientists have been saying for some time that the future looks bleak’. Perhaps so. But the IPCC summary did not say that the future was bleak. Watts’ presentation of the main findings was weak on science, but much stronger in terms of music (mournful) and computer graphics (spooky).
At the press launch of the summary, Dr Susan Solomon, a specialist in atmospheric science with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and one of the drafting authors, was asked: ‘You’ve taken a clearly objective, neutral, scientific line in your presentation of the data. Could I ask you now to perhaps sum up what kind of urgency this report should convey to policymakers?’ Solomon gave the following reply: ‘I can only give you something that’s going to disappoint you, sir. And that is that it’s my personal, scientific approach to say that it’s not my role to try to communicate what should be done. I believe that is a societal choice. I believe science is one input to that choice, and I also believe science can best serve society by refraining from going beyond its expertise. So I do not feel that it would be in the best interests of society making this decision in the most responsible way for me to push for urgency or action.’
Luckily for the press, there was a non-scientist on the platform. While the BBC gave no coverage of Solomon’s statement, it did extend that courtesy to Achim Steiner. Steiner’s biography boasts of his ‘track record’ in ‘sustainable development policy and environmental management’, as well as his ‘firsthand knowledge of civil society, governmental and international organisations’. He, at least, provided a memorable soundbite: the summary had sent a ‘chill down my spine’, he proclaimed."
Chimaxx: you say that AEI made the first ad hominem attack on the IPCC. This is not true. Rather, they noted that the IPCC is one of a type of studies, and that this type of study often has these sorts of flaws. In this case, that is literally true, since the reports from the IPCC that came out were the executive summaries that obviously only give one view of the study, when in fact there could be as many as the number of scientists. So the executive summaries do not reflect the entirety of the Work Group's findings. The executive summary, here, portrays a false consensus by portraying only the most common view (or even just the view that fits the view of the summarizer, if we're going to talk about everyone's biases).
On the subject of ad hominem: from what I have said above, one can definitely conclude that the statement X can be evaluated independently of person A. Now if Person A is given to lying, that's a different matter. Then the probability that he is lying can be taken into account, and be used to save time. But his statement can still be evaluated objectively. Again, the proper logical path is from the statement to the person: Statement X has certain biases, therefore person A probably has those biases, or: Statement X is a lie, therefore person A can and will lie. But if he can lie, isn't that just a better reason to look at the facts that he used to potentially lie with instead of just saying that he is a liar, therefore this is a lie?
On the subject of AEI, now, the root of this whole issue: first, the evidence that AEI is biased to begin with remains sketchy. The Guardian article says that AEI receives $1.6 million from Exxon-Mobil annually. Now, I don't know the details of organization budgets, because I'm not out of school yet, but isn't the budget for an operation like a think-tank at least twenty times that? I'm being conservative here: it's probably more like a hundred million. That makes Exxon-Mobil a 5% contributor, at most, to AEI. That doesn't seem like enough to completely subvert the think tank. Furthermore, the Guardian provides no data on the money AEI receives from other sources. It could receive $98.4 million from Save the Planet! Inc, making AEI significantly biased in the other direction. More reasonably, environmental organizations probably contribute a good deal of money to AEI, balancing out the donations from oil companies like Exxon-Mobil. Finally, the letter itself was only very subtly biased, if at all, against the IPCC report. It said that executive summaries (such as the April release) of group studies often suffer from self-selection bias and do not reflect the views of the entire Work Group, among other issues. That sounds reasonable to me, and I'd want to verify that the IPCC report is actually as strongly and unanimously for artificially induced global warming as the summaries make it out to be. Furthermore, I'd want to know if they were right. Double-checking never hurt.
Now, I'm going to repeat something I said in the original comments about AEI, which is that it doesn't matter too much if they're biased. If the letter is biased one way or the other, scientists who share AEI's view will probably accept the commission. But so will scientists who don't share that view. Here's why: we can split this group of scientists into two basic groups: those who spot the bias and those who don't. Those who don't will agree to the commission, or not, based on personal reasons like time restraints. Those who do, on the other hand, will see that the report will probably have a lot of articles espousing AEI's viewpoint, and will have an additional incentive to accept the commission: to balance the viewpoint of AEI's study. Finally, if the AEI report comes out biased, who cares as long as the science is good? That means that that bias has some real credibility, which means that any opinion the other way that doesn't mention AEI's credible opinion isn't telling the whole story. Now, this is only if AEI's study is credible; no teaching the creationism controversy just because some people insist that the Earth was made 4-6000 years ago. But AEI doesn't have to worry about being perfectly objective and representing the other side; the IPCC, if it's really as pro-global warming as the executive summaries portray, will show the other side perfectly well. And if they don't...well, that's just evidence for AEI's point of view, isn't it?
40 mins later:
Just not credible.
Viscus flatulates:
In other words, logically and formally, P is false: there is no false dichotomy. Perhaps non-sense would be a better description of your confused blathering.
Yet another logical fallacy: the strawman. NO ONE said you couldn't do this. In fact, I addressed this in full previously:
"No one is saying that you can't say R &~C. What is being drummed into your thick skull is that you cannot say R &~C AND say that P is true. As demonstrated above, ~C renders P false. No ifs or buts or "partially true" if logic is to remain truth-functional. Stop arbitrarily breaking the rules of logic everytime you're cornered."
In other words, there is no "false dichotomy". ~P is not materially equivalent to R &~C and no one has claimed otherwise. Knocking down this strawman does NOT show that (P v ~P) is a false dichotomy, nor does it allow you to deny the law of the excluded middle willy nilly by proposing a logically nonsensical "partial-truth" predicate.
But we get right to the nub of "viscus"'s problem when we encounter the following:
Is this clown serious? Imagine that - how dare I use standard logical definitions when talking about logic. We should instead use "viscus"'s terms that mean whatever he wants them to mean, nevermind the the standard definitions in place. Inconvenient? We'll simply redefine what we want logical rules and logical terms to mean, while denying their applicability.
If ever one needs an example of hackish behaviour, one need only observe "viscus"'s justifications for logic-mangling.
To recap:
1. He denies the law of the excluded middle
2. Not only does he deny it, he confuses it with a false dichotomy
3. He denies truth-functional truth and truth-functionality in logic
4. He confuses logical truth-functionality with that of natural language
5. He denies the law of non-contradiction
6. He believe that the logical fallacy of ad hominem is logically valid, and attempts to justify it
7. The strawman is not excluded in his repertoire
8. He arbitrarily redefines logical validity to mean something else than it means in logic
9. He denies that the rules of logic are intimately bound up with truth-functionality and the standard definition of logical validity
10. And finally, he denies that logical terms have standard definitions as a consequence of 9.
In short, it boils down to this hack making his own definitions for what he wants logical terms to mean. The irony does not escape me.
Your response is a non sequitur.
Really guys, why waste my time and yours by responding without comprehending? It's not difficult to pick up a logic text.
Such a defence would be laughed out of any of the cognate sciences and needless to say is invalid. Still doesn't explain the hominem / hominen confusion though. But let's not have spelling competence as it relates to credibility get in the way of substance . . . .