[lit-ideas] Re: Can You Imagine 2 + 2 = 5?
- From: palma@xxxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2007 05:23:14 -0500 (EST)
Now I am honestly losing track.
What is the point here? That "might makes it right"? That if one-two-n
people believe firmly, fervidly imagine, take for certain that X, then
X?
That is at best a shoddy piece of reasoning.
If the question is a political issue, how to change their mind [notice
that it is worthwhile to consider the point only once one has reasons to
think they are *wrong* about X], the answers are many.
My preferred example is the vast majority of Germans who fervidly
believed that the Slavs were vermin to be exterminated. They changed
their mind in Stalingrad in this very days of winter of 1942.
On Tue, 20
Nov 2007, Andreas Ramos wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Robert Paul" <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
>
> > I don't get what it would mean for someone to know a logical
> > impossibility. Usually logical impossibility is a deal-breaker in
> > arguments?to show that one's interlocutor is committed to believing in one
> > if he or she continues down the present path is more or less like saying
> > 'Mate in two moves, if you don't move your knight.' More or less, but not
> > exactly.
>
> As I said, I would have agreed with this for many years.
>
> But I've noticed in the last few years that illogical or irrational thought
> (which you and I assume isn't possible) is indeed possible and it's
> disturbingly common.
>
> You can't imagine that someone can think 2+2=5, yet if we increase the
> numbers (which doesn't change the logic sense), people easily imagine wrong
> percentages or results of large numbers.
>
> And then there's politics and religion. These seem to thrive on logical
> impossiblity. The christian bible is a morass of illogical statements,
> riddled with logical contradictions. Yet that doesn't bother the believers
> at all.
>
> We can stick to our principles and say "that's irrational, and therefore
> you've lost", but that doesn't go anywhere. They still believe their ideas
> and we end up having to deal with that.
>
> yrs,
> andreas
> www.andreas.com
>
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