[lit-ideas] Re: Persuasion Redux
- From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2007 22:27:38 +0900
On Dec 23, 2007 2:52 PM, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> I mention this because in one context, formal logic, the distinction
> between truth and validity is strict: arguments are neither true nor
> false, and propositions are neither valid nor invalid. Yet here's John,
> assigning a lack of validity to an assumption. But of course we
> understand him. Context is all, as someone said earlier (Phil? Eric?),
> and in this context (class dismissed) we might even let someone get away
> with saying that an argument was true.
My thanks to Robert Paul for reminding us of this genuinely useful
distinction, between formal logic and other contexts. The sense of "valid"
to which I pointed is more statistical than logical, and has more to do with
the relation of a representation to the world than to the relation of steps
in a fully formalized game to each other, i.e., the relation of the map to
the territory instead of whether the map is properly drawn by the rules of
one or another cartographic system.
But again I slip into metaphor. I wonder if we could get this or another of
our eminent professors to elaborate a bit on the relation of "logic" as used
by analytical philosophers (e.g., in the title of W. V. Quine's
_Mathematical Logic_) and logic as used by continental philosophers and
their academic colleagues (e.g., in the title of Pierre Bourdieu's_The Logic
of Practice_).
John
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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