Date: Tue, 9 Apr 1996 00:39:07 -0400
Subject: Re: More on Modernism, Reason and Myth


Rahul:
---------
This is amusing, Leo. First you say I made no other arguments, then you
answer the arguments I didn't make. Phrasing a question as a one-line
attempt at humor doesn't make it less of a question.

Leo:
------
Well, I guess passive-aggressive physicists have figured out how to collapse
the time-space continuum. What I answered were the arguments you presented in
your third post on the subject, which you began by noting how I had only
selected your weakest argument in the first two posts to answer. You were
correct that it was your weakest argument; it had to be so by definition
because it was the only argument one could reasonably construe out of them.
What I was answering were the points you made in the third post, after you
announced that I had ignored them. (This is getting rather silly, and very
much beside the point, but its hard to engage in substantive dialogue when
each post begins with these announcements on how I am running and hiding from
the your arguments.)

Rahul:
---------
I wouldn't tax Hobbes with Locke or Locke with Jefferson, myself. Yes, like
everything else, the idea of the social contract has a contradictory
legacy, and I (marginally) overstated the case. Hegel was a reactionary.
Marx, who used Hegel, was not. It is, however, perfectly legitimate to
claim, as many have done, that much of Hegel's oeuvre was created in an
attempt ideologically to uphold the Prussian state. If you say, "But Marx
was inspired by Hegel," that is simply not to the point.

Leo:
------
Forgive me, but doesn't this argument take the form of an analogy as in --
Hobbes:Locke::Hegel:Marx. I am not sure exactly what this has to do with
whether or not social contract theory is politically quietist, which was the
issue we were discussing, or how it refutes the fact that social contract
theory provided an essential foundation for the right to revolution, first
expounded by Locke, but I thought the form of the argument was very
interesting given that you go on to say...

Rahul:
---------
Analogy, on the other hand, is about the best method there is for achieving
absurdity. I can make an analogy between any two things (or could if I was
perhaps a hair's-breadth more creative than I am). Analogy has as much place
in reasoning as final cause does in analyzing causation. If you disagree on
that, your time might be more profitably spent figuring
out how many angels can stand on the head of a pin. Analogy is *at best* a
useful heuristic device, and, even in that capacity, misleads more often
than it enlightens, unless one is very careful.

Leo:
------
So are we to conclude that your previous argument "achieved absurdity", or
that it was simply "analagous" to discussing how many angels can stand on the
head of a pin, or just that you are a great deal more careful than the rest
of us ordinary human beings so you can use analogies? Are physicists a
priestly elite in the academic temple who set down the rules of logic for the
faithful, but need not apply them to themselves? (Sorry if I rub it in, but
your passive-aggressive approach certainly asked for it.) 

Now the mortal sin in my original discussion of analogy was to say:
"Analogy is a form of logic, and has been since Aristotle wrote about logic."

To which Rahul responds:
-----------------------------------
Ah, yes, the argument from authority. Scratch any "anti-authoritarian"
social scientist and out it pops. And why? Because to conduct an argument
requires appeal to some authority, and if you deny the complete authority of
reason and of empirical test, and such like things, you must introduce the
authority of people. At least you aren't ashamed to go right to the best
source and, along with the Scholastics, say, "Aristotle dixit."

Leo:
-----
Now, I thought what I said was EVER SINCE Aristotle, as in the field of logic
as philosophers have studied and practiced it in the centuries since it was
first systematically developed by Aristotle. You know, one of these inductive
arguments, where one might reasonably conclude that if the consensus of the
field for centuries was that analogy was a form of logic, there would at
least be a burden of proof on those who want to contend otherwise. And the
line "if you deny the complete authority of reason and of empirical test",
directed at me, might reasonably be considered an exercise in hyperbole
which, if I am not mistaken, has generally been considered to a rhetorical
trope ever since Aristotle. But perhaps we anti-authoritarian social
scientists haven't been able to keep up with the development of predicate
calculus, and so we haven't grasped how hyperbole is the new Ockham's razor
of logic in the field of physics. (Sorry again; I guess we both must be
passsive-aggressive.)

Rahul:
---------
Induction is, strictly speaking, not quite valid, and cannot be used if one
wishes to ascertain absolute truth. Fortunately, no one on the list but the
Catholics and the Stalinists is interested in that, so we can use induction
as one of our chief modes of reasoning -- although care must be exercised
that is not needed with deduction, such as choosing representative samples,
inter alia.

Leo:
------
What a relief! I can still use inductive logic. But the point I was trying to
make when I raised this issue was that different forms of logic are
relatively strong or weak in a very precise sense -- the difficulty with
which one refutes them. For example, if I was to make the inductive argument
that the Marxism1 list is a sectarian cesspool because five of its members
(Herr Adolpho and his crew) are the worst sectarian assholes one could ever
meet, it could be easily refuted by offering counter-factual examples from
the list. Or if I was to make an analogy between the Marxism1 list and a
dysfunctional family of Spartacists and Stalinists, one could simply show
where the parallel began to break down.  If on the other hand, I made a
deductive argument that the Marxism1 list is a sectarian cesspool because the
nature of the discourse which now dominates it is such that only hardened
sectarians would put up with it, refutation would be considerably more
difficult, and would have to engage my premises in a much more substantive
fashion. (But then I haven't the absolute truth of the deductive syllogism
knock me off my horse on the road to Damascus.)

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.

Finally, Rahul:
This doesn't follow. Let me give you an example from science, just to show
you I'm not biased. It seems that Galileo, at least at times, didn't
understand Galilean relativity. In response to what he called Kepler's
"mystical" view that tides were somehow related to the moon, he put forth
the suggestion that perhaps they were simply sloshing of water because of
the earth's motion. Anyone who actually understands what is being taught in
freshman physics knows by the end of the first week that this is
impossible. Now, Galileo's opinion on Galilean relativity is of the most
profound irrelevance to anything. Because I like to use reason and Hobbes
was one of the prophets of reason doesn't mean that his attitudes toward
the importance of myth are something I should take into account. Many
people would go along with Descartes's cogito without agreeing with or even
caring that he used that merely as a starting point to "prove" the
existence of God.

Leo:
------
But your argument is based on the premise that there is no necessary relation
between Hobbes views on Reason and logic, on the one hand, and Myth and
rhetoric, on the other hand. This is a premise that can not simply be
asserted, since it goes against the very terms in which Hobbes presents the
issues. The problem is not simply that Hobbes chose to crown his work with a
myth, but that he does so in a text which argues clearly and unequivocally
against such myth; the point is not simply that Leviathan is a work of
rhetorical mastery, but that Hobbes argues against the use of such rhetoric
in the very same text. If we assume that the man was neither stupid nor
intellectually indolent, we must grapple with that problem.  
 
Rahul:
---------
On reading this over, I find I've said some things you might possibly
construe as insulting. I still want to keep them, but, in my typical
passive-aggressive way, let me apologize for them now.

Leo:
------
Me too.



     --- from list marxism2-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---