[lit-ideas] Re: The Educational Value of Slips of the Whatever
- From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:44:11 -0500
Hi guys and gals and gays,
I've never understood a single world Richard Hinninge has written, nor palma,
nor Walter O. and very few of Donal's or RP's or JL's, I'm sometimes jealous
that I don't know what the hell you guys are talking about, but not usually.
I'm comfortable in my ignorance so long as I feel good about myself. The
concerns that I concern myself with usually concern my emotional life, not my
philosophical angst. So get a life, fellas. Thankfully, this list hasn't what
you guys want it to be -- an athenaeum dedicated to lectures in the various
branches of Philosophy, Rhetoric, Grammar and Jurisbullshitery -- instead,
it's like Oprah. : ) Even so, I must leave you for a period. Yes, yes,
Walter won't have me to kick around anymore. At least not for awhile. But
I'll be back and, no doubt with a vengeance. Things have gotten godawful
disarrayed here and will take a bit of time to straighten out, else I'd never
let you I-know-everything kind of people live in peace.
Peace,
Mike Geary
.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Henninge" <RichardHenninge@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 7:26 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The Educational Value of Slips of the Whatever
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Donal McEvoy" <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 6:23 PM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The Educational Value of Slips of the Whatever
>
>
>
> --- On Tue, 29/9/09, Richard Henninge wrote:
>
>
>> I pray, and I think we should all so pray that Donal is
>> indeed "mistaken" that "any assertion, including those as to
>> the validity of deductive inferences, is possibly or
>> potentially mistaken." This is an extremely radical
>> position, fit, metaphorically speaking, to put quicksand
>> under the basis of all our mutual understanding, unless
>> Donal is saying, in effect, "not to worry--even if a given
>> assertion as to the validity of deductive inferences is
>> mistaken, that would not preclude the validity of deductive
>> inferences so asserted."
>
> Comments:
>
> 1. The last statement does not follow from the premiss I used: from the fact
> that the validity of a (putative) deductive inference "is possibly or
> potentially mistaken" (my premiss) we cannot leap to the conclusion that it
> "is mistaken" (Richard's conclusion).
>
> ...
>
> Two comments:
>
> 1a. It can no longer be glancingly admonished as a "slip of the whatever"
> when an interlocutor misstates his own premisses, including the
> unacknowledged singularizing of his originally sweeping generalization
> ("any assertion, including those as to the validity of _deductive
> inferences_, ... ) and the unacknowledged replacing of his original "any
> assertion ... as to the validity of" by the completely different "fact of
> the validity of ... " what has now become his singular and parenthetically
> qualified "(putative) deductive inference."
>
> 2a. Furthermore, the conclusion I supposedly leap to is just the opposite of
> what Donal credits me with claiming. I do not say that "Donal says, in
> effect" that the _assertion_ of the validity or invalidity of deductive
> inferences makes them so, makes them valid or invalid, but that such
> assertion leaves them cold, so to speak, and hence does not "preclude" their
> validity or invalidity. I in no way say either that, because (as Popper
> says) the assertion of the validity of deductive inferences or (as Donal is
> now saying) the actual validity of those deductive inferences "is possibly
> or potentially mistaken," _either_ that the assertion of their validity _or_
> that their actual validity "is mistaken." What I disagree with is the use of
> the word "validity" as, in some way, scalar. If this so-called validity is
> historically conditioned or if it can be impinged upon by such
> life-and-death scenarios as those proposed by Donal, or if this validity
> _can be_ mistaken, it seems to me it must be of an entirely different
> category than logical statements of the sort, "if P & Q, then Q." It's the
> putting in question of the validity of _that_ (remember, "... any assertion
> ...") that makes me wonder what intelligent discussion is going to look like
> without some such necessary logical infrastructure.
>
> Richard Henninge
> University of Mainz
>
>
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