Date: Tue, 9 Apr 1996 00:38:50 -0500
Subject: Re: More on Modernism, Reason and Myth


Leo:


Rahul is using the descriptive terms strong and weak here in a much more
general way -- as if an argument which uses induction or analogy is
necessarily weak in the sense that it is a poor argument. This is not
tenable: the way to show an argument is poor is not by reference to the form
of logic it uses, but by revealing fallacies in whatever form of  logic it
uses. The fact that the logic is inductive or analagous only makes it that
much easier to show the fallacy, should it exist. But to do that with respect
to what I had to say about Hobbes and Leviathan would mean that Rahul would
actually have to engage the argument I made, and that has yet to happen. Is
there a counterfactual which demonstrates the use of a rhetoric-free logic?
Certainly not in the form that Rahul presents his views.


Rahul:

No, using induction or analogy doesn't necessarily make an argument poor.
An argument based entirely on analogy, however, is necessarily poorer than
one based on deduction. The hierarchy is not just in ease of refutation,
but in what can be achieved by different modes. Induction cannot establish
absolute truth; no matter if we observe the same phenomenon a million
times, the million-and-first may be different. There are even examples of
this. Analogy can serve to make a point clearer, as I used it (the example
of Hegel and Marx) when I made the point that your invocation of Locke and
Jefferson could not speak to Hobbes's intent in his theory of the social
contract, which was the question at hand. It cannot, however, in itself
give any reason to believe in its applicability in any particular case. I
didn't speak to the other question of the social contract, because it's
clear that it has been used both to justify quietism and to justify
revolution. You seem to be espousing some kind of nonhierarchical pluralism
of method, when the truth is always more complicated than that. That any
two modes are equally valid is the unlikely eventuality -- far more likely
that one is superior to the other, although it may not be strictly
superior, in the sense of being better in every case.

I knew you didn't perceive yourself as directly appealing to Aristotle's
authority, but you were appealing to authority with your invocation of what
every beginning logic class teaches you.

I wouldn't mind your insults if you weren't also doing insult to the truth
of this argument. But then, you'll say the same thing about me, right?





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