What rhetorical technique or fallacy are you relying upon with that question? 😉
Source date (UTC): 2016-05-26 06:02:24 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/735712669919903744
Reply addressees: @thecoffeemonkey
Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/735472563556483072
IN REPLY TO:
@thecoffeemonkey
@curtdoolittle how can he be on the wrong side of something that hasn’t happened yet?
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/735472563556483072
temporal syntax would have required two more characters. But then, you weren’t really criticizing that were you? 😉
Source date (UTC): 2016-05-25 14:49:39 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/735482972682457089
Reply addressees: @thecoffeemonkey
Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/735472563556483072
IN REPLY TO:
@thecoffeemonkey
@curtdoolittle how can he be on the wrong side of something that hasn’t happened yet?
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/735472563556483072
RESPONSE
As far as he goes – which is nowhere – he’s wrong of course. All our language consists of analogies to experience. All our words are symbols. That humans are born with intuitions (tendencies) is different from being born with facts. Moreover, we can divide our language into the scientific (independent of emotion) and the aesthetic (dependent on emotion). And the reason we use this language of computer science is that it is the closest analogy to experience that we have produced for the discussion of mental phenomenon free of the loading and framing and deceit of the past.
The only testable statement he is making is that recall-memory is limited. Even that doesn’t hold up, since a person can fairly often identify a counterfeit bill visually, even if he cannot draw it. Furthermore, some people CAN draw a bill (or entire city) from recall – even at a glance. It’s just EXPENSIVE For a brain to remember things that way, so those of us who CAN do it, learn not to do it. (I build a large 3d model of my city as a child, complete with all the houses sculpted from wood – just out of memory. I can still drive all over Connecticut from memory, but not even across Kiev today.)
I will tell you what he is really doing: trying (like a woman) to maintain that psychologism (emotions) are a cause rather than a consequence of information processing.
So, as a person who has stated an opposing argument (no one thinks the brain is like a computer, we merely use that language because nothing else is close enough of an analogy), testimonialism would tell me that he is trying to justify his priors of using sympathetic testing (emotions) to understand the brain rather than TRYING TO DEVELOP AN OPERATIONAL LANGUAGE for discussing the brain.
ANd as a person who claims that the first principle of the mind is ‘acquisition and inventory of resources’ (property), and that emotions consist only of reactions to change in state of those resources, I would say that the brain is in fact a computer that assists us in acquiring resources, and emotions that assist in motivating us to choose between various possibilities.
Humans are in fact, fairly mechanical, in the biological sense (as are proteiens, as is chemistry, as are all physical phenomenon.
The magic of humans is that we do it with fragmentary information in order to predict the future course of events, so that we can outwit those current events, and alter them for our benefit -allowing us to capture resources, which we then consume and radiate as heat.
IN this sense, our brains do not COMPUTE as today’s computers do, but they do SEARCH (sense-percieve-associate) and we do CALCULATE (reason), and we do it for the purpose of finding ways of outwitting the dim physical unverse.
Source date (UTC): 2016-05-20 02:32:00 UTC
COMPARE TESTIMONIALISM WITH TOULMIN
Testimonialism proves explanatory power across every domain.
Toulmin -vs- Testimonialism
“Claim,” : Hypothesis (guess)
“Data,” : External Correspondence
“Warrant”: Existential Possibility (operational)
“Backing”: Internal Consistency
“Rebuttal” : Limits
“Qualifier” : Warranty (confidence)
TOULMIN:
In The Uses of Argument (1958), Toulmin proposed a layout containing six interrelated components for analyzing arguments:
Claim: Conclusions whose merit must be established. For example, if a person tries to convince a listener that he is a British citizen, the claim would be “I am a British citizen.” (1)
Data: The facts we appeal to as a foundation for the claim. For example, the person introduced in 1 can support his claim with the supporting data “I was born in Bermuda.” (2)
Warrant: The statement authorizing our movement from the data to the claim. In order to move from the data established in 2, “I was born in Bermuda,” to the claim in 1, “I am a British citizen,” the person must supply a warrant to bridge the gap between 1 & 2 with the statement “A man born in Bermuda will legally be a British Citizen.”
Backing: Credentials designed to certify the statement expressed in the warrant; backing must be introduced when the warrant itself is not convincing enough to the readers or the listeners. For example, if the listener does not deem the warrant in 3 as credible, the speaker will supply the legal provisions as backing statement to show that it is true that “A man born in Bermuda will legally be a British Citizen.”
Rebuttal: Statements recognizing the restrictions to which the claim may legitimately be applied. The rebuttal is exemplified as follows, “A man born in Bermuda will legally be a British citizen, unless he has betrayed Britain and has become a spy of another country.”
Qualifier: Words or phrases expressing the speaker’s degree of force or certainty concerning the claim. Such words or phrases include “possible,” “probably,” “impossible,” “certainly,” “presumably,” “as far as the evidence goes,” or “necessarily.” The claim “I am definitely a British citizen” has a greater degree of force than the claim “I am a British citizen, presumably.”
The first three elements “claim,” “data,” and “warrant” are considered as the essential components of practical arguments, while the second triad “qualifier,” “backing,” and “rebuttal” may not be needed in some arguments.
Source date (UTC): 2016-05-17 06:52:00 UTC
NEW CATEGORIES OF ARGUMENT
Excerpt from “Mastery > Debate > Types of Discourse”
(…)
7) NEW: CRITIQUE: A type of deceitful argument that uses heaping of undue praise, selective information, asymmetric information, loading, framing, overloading, suggestion, deceit, lying and fraud, by heaping of undue praise, criticizing a competing position, rather than demonstrating that one’s own proposition survives scrutiny. Practice proposes a poorly articulated ideal by heaping undue praise upon it, then constructing a straw man of the opposition argument, and constructing a detailed criticism of it. The purpose of this technique is not to advance the stated solution that the audience does not understand, or is not familiar with, but to undermine the audience’s confidence in the opposing argument that the audience does understand, or is familiar with. In other words: polluting the commons with disinformation.
8) NEW: CRITICISM : A type of scientific argument spoken or written, that uses ratio-scientific arguments to attempt to falsify a proposition in order to determine whether it can survive scrutiny. A criticism is used to test propositions in the physical sciences.
9) NEW: *PROSECUTION* : A type of scientific argument, spoken or written, that seeks determine if a proposition is false, biased, wishful, suggestive, deceptive, our outright fraudulent, in order to obtain a discount, rent, or theft. A Prosecution is used to test propositions in the cooperative sciences.
(…)
Source date (UTC): 2016-05-17 06:37:00 UTC
WITTGENSTEIN AS AN EXAMPLE OF THE INTELLECTUAL CONSEQUENCES OF VARIATIONS IN SEXUAL DIMORPHISM
I might like to add this idea to the Wittgenstein criticism:
His work (nominalism in general) is a further example of the tendency of feminine thought – an intellectual form of solipsism, in which meaning rather than emotions constitute reality.
When I make the exaggerated claim that ‘all jews are female’ I do so because this tendency to treat meaning as existential is dominant throughout jewish thought as engineering is dominant in western thought, and as emotion is dominant in female thought.
once you grasp this you can see the consistent pattern in jewish (feminine) cosmopolitan thought, in german (rationalist) thought, in anglo moral thought, and in american procedural thought, and in engineering versus religion in general.
This is why popper stumbled upon the idea (falsification) but failed – he was a verbalist. This is why Kant stumbled about the solution but failed – religious verbalism. This is why Locke/smith/hume stumbled upon but could not solve it – moralism. This is why jefferson stumbled on the solution but failed – legalism, …
We can’t escape our frames. Our cultural group evolutionary strategies are certainly programmed into us over time – the only question is how much of that programming has been reduced to genetics – or at least distributions of genetic preferences.
This is a profound problem. Which is why truthful speech is as important in philosophical, political and economic discourse as it is in the sciences.
Source date (UTC): 2016-05-16 05:18:00 UTC
HELP WITH TRENDY STUFF
BASED “Based is all about being yourself and not caring what anybody else thinks.” Is that right?
POS? Is this “Piece of sh_t” or what?
Source date (UTC): 2016-05-12 09:40:00 UTC
HILARY PUTNAM
Reading putnam and listening to his lectures.
How is it that Putnam, knowing the same things I do about math, logic, computer science, and language, can come so close and not get there? Not make the leap?
Micro economics. Cooperation is an operation for the purpose of calculation.
Source date (UTC): 2016-05-11 04:50:00 UTC
Well, existentially, a “Number” CAN only refer to a “name”. That name can refer to the base number set (in base ten, that’s 0-9), or it can refer to a positional number ( say, 12,345 ) or it can refer to a FUNCTION (say .9, 1/2, or the square root of 2, or any other non-reducible function.)
So the only ‘numbers’ that can exist are the natural numbers. The rest of the so called ‘numbers’ must refer to functions (a sequence of operations).
We can however, speak in terms of ‘meaning’ not ‘truth’. This is what mathematicians do. They speak in meaning. But we can translate ‘meaning’ into ‘truth’ (parsimonious existential necessity) for all mathematical statements. And as such, we can restate mathematics in truthful, existential, natural language.
But this would be burdensome. Because the reason that mathematicians use ‘meaning’ is to make the best use of symbols to save both state, and the possible operations upon that state. In other words, just as we use analogies (meaning) to simplify our effort at communication, mathematicians use symbols to simplify the difficulty in saving and transforming ratios.
Now, once we embark upon pragmatism (analogy, meaning) and not names (names) we get into the problem error, conflation, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, and deceit.
But as long as we can still translate meaning into truthfulness we can test our statements (series of symbols) against error conflation, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion and deceit. But then if we communicate by meaning, one either takes responsibility for the recipient’s interpretation, or one is exporting the cost of testing our statements to the other parties.
In other words, if we take a discount on communication, we force the cost of falsification upon others. Which may be beneficial for both sides. On the other hand, if one commits error, conflation, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion or deceit, then how do we know whether which of those that one engaged in?
Especially when many thinkers have seeded humanity with vast costly falsehoods by speaking meaningfully but not truthfully.
Source date (UTC): 2016-05-04 14:04:00 UTC
After you master the Operational POV (grammar of existence), then you master the four categories of property.
Source date (UTC): 2016-04-25 13:11:30 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/724586633840996352