[lit-ideas] Re: The Educational Value of Slips of the Whatever
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:57:57 +0000 (GMT)
There are too many disparate points in Richard's recent posts to usefully
address them at once. But here is a distinctish one..
--- On Thu, 10/9/09, Richard Henninge <RichardHenninge@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I gotta take a break and take us back, way back, to a
> phrase of Donal's that begged for clarification but for
> clarification of which I never asked. He once said words to
> the effect that sometimes the better argument does not win.
> Isn't the definition of the better argument tied up with its
> having won? And don't we acknowledge that the better
> argument is better just because it has won?
No and no again (unless we define winning and validity in a circular fashion
e.g. though no one accepted his claim that the earth went round the sun, and he
lost his case, as they burnt him at the stake it was clear his argument had
won) [and btw the claim I deploy definitional arguments is to me rich; I am
with Eric on his comments how setting up the debate in another thread leads by
definition to the conclusion claimed - but this is another issue].
Back to the track: the issue here is the difference between the validity of an
argument and the degree of acceptance of it. Many philosophers have tried to
break down this difference by arguing, in a variety of ways, that the degree of
acceptance of an argument is the [key] measure of its validity. P was always
staunchly against this in an old-fashioned Kantian way:- in his view questions
of fact are always logically distinct from questions of validity. And the
degree of acceptance of an argument is a question of fact, not of the
argument's validity.
Of course P is aware that in our lives we often use the degree of acceptance of
an argument as a guide to its validity, especially when we lack other
independent guides (though he thinks this truth can be easily over-rated; e.g.
if I ask for directions I might take a single contrary view over four others if
that one comes from someone who I sense actually knows what he is talking about
["directions", before anyone quibbles, being translatable into the terms of an
"argument"]). And he is aware that what is "accepted" may often be valid. These
do not affect the logical distinction, however.
P is interested in the growth of knowledge, not theories of "acceptance". And
anyone who looks at the growth of knowledge or the history of ideas, will, if
honest, admit that what is most "accepted" at one time may be mostly rejected
at another - rejected, that is, as not valid. So the logical distinction is
also necessary to explain the historical facts.
This would almost go without saying except that Richard seems to think it very
problematic: to the extent that he follows the above with this:-
>That statement
> has made me wonder about the status of discussion with a
> person holding such a view.
Open-minded and fallibilist, I'd suggest, and with a critical attitude (rather
than one enslaved to what is currently "accepted").
Richard then, somehow, finds he can conclude:
>Special pleading all the way
> down. Popper, say; McEvoy, say, can always rest content that
> their better arguments have been skewered by lesser
> arguments or have actually been the winning arguments though
> few acknowledge it.
I fail see to the logic; and the references to "special pleading" and "rest
content" are laughably ironic. It is "special pleading" and to "rest content"
to think you can dismiss an argument by saying "few acknowledge it". Apparently
Richard knows better.
D
Of course P's arguments are acknowledged by many more than a "few", and Richard
is also wrong if he is suggesting otherwise
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