Date: Mon, 09 Mar 1998 14:19:11 +0200
Subject: HAB: The Blind Baseball Player


At 21.40 9.3.1998 -0500, Ken wrote:
>Ok - this is where I stand, everything else is just window 
>dressing:
>
>*** Every time Habermas accuses someone of committing a 
>performative contradiction he commits a performative 
>contradiction himself because his justification of the charge 
>begs the question.  *** (you can quote me on that)

And what is the status of *your* charge of performative contradiction?

I don't know how to untangle that. Could you be yet a little more
specific and name the presupposition Habermas must make in
accusing someone of p.c., and which he thereby contradicts?

>Back to the fun stuff,

My guess is that sooner or later it will hit you like a
baseball bat why I too think this is fun stuff.

>> (K)  At SOME point the conclusion, God exists, MUST be 
>used as a premise in order to say God produces real effects.

...yes, but only if...

>(K) In order for God 
>to produce effects God must exist.

It's not that I'm disputing this claim, only the logical
status you give to it. It is not *logic* that says so; rather,
it follows from one definition of "existence".

>(A) I don't know if we can get any further with this....
>
>(K's R) Because I'm right about this. 

Well, I was thinking more along the lines that I'm not
competent to justify the basic axioms of logic, I can only
use them...

>Yeah yeah I haven't 
>spelled it all out but the premise that "God produces real 
>effects" *MUST* define what it means by God AND it *MUST* 
>presuppose that God exists.  If I get hit by a baseball bat this 
>*necessarily* means that baseball bats exist. 

As a matter of fact, yes. As a logical necessity, no.

>P1. God exists.  Baseball bats exist.
>  2.  Therefore it is possible for God to hit me with a baseball 
>bat.

(With some unproblematic premises left out, to be exact.)

>P3.  Being hit with a baseball bat hurts - it produces an effect.

We're doing fine so far.

>P4.  I was hit by a baseball bat by God.

Jaysus, you're not doing so fine anymore!

>  5.  By hitting me with a baseball bat God produced an effect.

Confused your logic circuitry?

>Therefore
>
>C.  God exists.
>  
>P4 requires P1.

a) Only with the hidden premise "God simply *must* exist in order to
produce an effect".
b) So? Inferential relationships between premises are not problematic as
such. What you want to say is that C requires P1 because it requires P4.
However,
you don't say at all, and it can't easily be read off from the above, what 
C requires in the first place. Indeed, in the above C follows only from
P1 and the rest of the premises are completely irrelevant to the conclusion.
On the other hand, if your hidden premise, say P0, was included, you could
deduce C from P4 and P0, without the circular premise P1.

I recommend getting a book like Jaakko Hintikka's _What If?_ to gain
a better understanding of the use of logic in argument analysis. Your
problem is that you are constantly bringing in tacit presuppositions.
If you lay out the argument so that you have all the premises in and
the conclusion follows by basic rules of logical deduction, you have
a valid argument no matter what - if the conclusion is false some of
the premises have to be. In this case, what makes arguing with you
frustrating is that you keep adding the conclusion as a superfluous premise, 
even though it follows from the original premises just fine. After you've
added
the conclusion as a premise, or as a premise of a premise, you claim
you have found a circle. Well, yes, but one of your own making.

P1. If and only if x is a dog, x barks.
P1'. If and only if x produces effects, x exists.
P1''. If and only if x belongs to set A, x belongs to set B.

P2. Spot barks.
P2'. God produces effects.
P2''. Y belongs to set A.
==========================>From P1 & P2 (etc.), it follows that
C. Spot is a dog.
C'. God exists.
C''. Y belongs to set B.

Your claim is that saying that Spot is a dog because it barks is
circular, because barking already presupposes being a dog - after all,
one *must* be a dog if one is to bark (ex hypothesi). Well, duh!

Think of it this way: if the only things you know are the premises
above and the rules of logic, you will be able to deduce the conclusion.
You don't have to presuppose anything else; for example, you don't
have to know the conclusion beforehand. Therefore, the inference is 
not circular. (And I do think your charge againt Habermas relies
on the same fallacious logic.)

> I see what you are saying though...

I doubt that...

>> (K) What he is doing here is using the rules of an argument 
>to show that arguments have rules.  
>
>(A)  I think we're getting closer to the crux of this debate.
>He is not using the premise "arguments have rules" to 
>conclude that arguments have rules. First of all, that's not 
>even ultimate conclusion...
>
>(K's interference) Then it is not an argument.

Reasoning in the real world proceeds from an argument to another;
the conclusion of one is used as a premise for another. There is
no ultimate ground, not even a circle (although Hegel would like that);
in the end everything hangs on practice.

>(Back to A) 
>argumentation is a language game constituted as a distinct 
>genre by having a set of rules.
>
>(K's R) Chess is a good example.  You need a rulebook to 
>place chess.  You cannot deduce the rules of chess from 
>playing chess... you must have a rulebook a priori. 

But you can deduce the rules of chess from watching and
from asking the people who play. That's the difference between
chess and language games: we are thrown into a world where
the latter are always already being played (as is chess, come
to think of it). We learn the rules as we grow; we learn to 
differentiate between objective, subjective and social worlds
in talk and in thought and so on.

>But in 
>Habermas's game you have to obey all the rules in order to 
>qualify as playing chess.

As in everybody else's chess. Change them, and it's simply not
the same game any more; it'll only be a more or less similar one.
(If it's recognized by a lot of others, it might be called a
"variation" of the original game.)

>  But where did the rulebook
>come from?  For Habermas it is a fact of reason, a 
>development of nature.  

The task of the philosopher is not to explain why we pray or
promise or argue. She can help us understand ourselves better,
and she can give us reasons to change.

>I like playing chess
>just as much as anyone else - but I also like to change the 
>rules.  I still play chess - but my chess partner and I agree 
>that the rules are open to being changed.

Strictly speaking, you don't. The rules of language games, for sure,
are always open to change and less strictly defined, even in institutionalized
games. There's not even an unchanging core; it could be that there would
simply be no promising one day, or that what would be called promising
wouldn't share any features with what is no so called. Still, there
may be some slowly changing, relatively permanent sedimentations.

>(A)  In the above, the premise "argumentation has rules" 
>wasn't used once. [...]
>
>(K's R) Sure sure - but you slipped in the principle of 
>noncontradiction as a moral guideline. 

I could accept "a normative guideline", but not moral. All
norms are not moral - for example logical and scientific ones.

>What if Marcuse is 
>right? 

Grumpy old neo-Hegelians don't turn me on. If we can deal with
this without dialectical logic, we'll get less confused. After all,
your charge claims to be valid within the limits of traditional
logic, doesn't it? (I'll try to look up that book too, however, thanks
for the reference.)

>>> (K) Bring it to the (Habermasian) moral level and I will try to 
>>>show you.
>
>>(A)  All right. Here's a country of four: two refugees (A and B) 
>>and two citizens C) and D).
>
>>A. - I believe us refugees should have political rights in this 
>>country.
>> [...]
>
>(K's R) AWESOME.  Excellent example - I really admire this 
>kind of work - and it is work - because it is time consuming and 
>often done with great pains...

Thanks. In this case, it was the fastest and most enjoyable
paragraph to write, though.

>But.... I don't see at all how this
>moves beyond a (Habermasian) ethic into the realm of the 
>universal.  

I don't think it should. I've tried to clarify the sense of
universality in Habermas in an earlier posting called "Three
Kinds of Universality". The above argument features two of those
kinds and the I think Habermas should drop the demand for the third.

>(A) I'll admit to that, but my point still remains that Habermas
>is not trying to argue the case for pure reason. Communicative
>rationality is situated rationality, and its results are 
>contingent and always provisionary.
>
>(K's R) But no contradictions.

How typical - I defend Derrida in front of logicians and the 
next thing I know I have to stand up for the principle of non-contradiction.
>From the point of view of rationality and argumentation, it seems
quite indispensable to me. If I let you hold contradictory positions on the
same issue, I'm hardly holding you accountable at all. (Ie. if I can't
criticize you for holding both that refugees should have the vote and
that they shouldn't, what can I say?)


Antti





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