It is always nice to physically pack ones bag, shut down the computer, to leave the every day vibrant PATAS Online community. Even though it's the 21st century, and technology is ruling our daily life; meeting peoples in person, still has its advantages and gives that personal human touch, the spark coming from the smile and hand shake between us fellow humans. Leaving the quiet of the house, and throwing oneselve into the fray of the city, is again for a good reason. PATAS has called for the April meet-up, bringing new and old members together, travelling in from all directions.
The summer has really kicked in in Manila, so the PATAS roof terrace allowed a welcoming breeze to make it bearable. The introduced topic, “Argumentation 1O1, of this 6 April 2013 PATAS meet-up, was surely going to be an interesting trip into the psychology of logic, rhetoric and argumentation with all its tools.
Don Paez, an expert on this topic, was willing to give a two hour lecture, for the participants of this event. Don Paez holds an AB in Philosophy, specializing in Logic and Philosophy of Science. Don Paez used to teach logic, metaphysics and philosophy subjects in the University of The Philippines.
Special guest of this day was Alexander Blechschmidt, a student from Germany. He is 29 years old, and has completed his studies in Ethnology, History of Science and Biological Anthropology at the University George-August in Goettingen.
He is now working on his PhD at the University Frankfurt am Main in Germany. His subject is “The diversity of non religions” under the lead of Dr. Johannes Quack. He was confronted with the topic, making him decide for it, when preparing for his final examination in “History of Science”. He used the Giordano Bruno Foundation a German organization focusing on the enlightenment of humans, humanism and reason, and Richard Dawkins, to portray the ration between science and religions. At the same time he worked in Goettingen in a project regarding religion and modernity in south-east Asia. From there the choice of the region. In his research he came across the matter of Alexander Aan in Indonesia, giving him the final spark of interest.
Wikipedia writes the following about Mr. Aan: “Alexander Aan is an Indonesian atheist and ex-Muslim of Minang descent. He was put into jail 2012 for posting comments and images on Facebook that were judged to be "disseminating information aimed at inciting religious hatred or hostility" by the Muaro Sijunjung district court. The sentence sparked national debate and caused Amnesty International to designate him a prisinor of conscience.”
During his work, aiming towards his PhD, Alexander Blechschmidt found an article from PATAS, regarding the debate about the Reproductive Health Bill. After looking at further publications on the PATAS web site, he decided to visit The Philippines and PATAS, to see, if he could later this year, over a period of 10 Months, complete his thesis with the help of PATAS and research in the country.
But now it was time for Don Paez to start his presentation.
Talking about logic and the facing of criticism from the religious, most peoples are not familiar with logic, even though when they are Atheists and dealing with rational thinking.
Regarding rhetoric, this is the art of convincing peoples.
Rhetoric is divided into three elements: Ethos, pathos and logos
Ethos questions: Am i worth listening to?
Patos regards: Emotional response
Logos questions reason: Am I reasonable?
Argumentation and logic
Logic is partly the study of the rules of thought, and partly the science of reasoning. Yet emotions hinder reasoning, and very often a subject to bias and also influenced by insight. Wikipedia states: “Bias is an inclination of temperament outlook to present or hold a partial perspective at the expense of alternatives in reference to objects, people, or groups. Anything biased generally is one-sided and therefore lacks a neutral point of view. Bias can come in many forms and is often considered to be synonymous with prejudice or bigotry.”
Science of correct inferential reasoning
Argumentation always starts with an argument started by one person.
An argument is a group of statements giving a claim. Claim and reason aim for a person to “believe” the claim. Premise and conclusion is an argument, hence only one at a time is just a statement.
A statement is a claim with a truth value.
There are two types of arguments, the inductive and the deductive:
Premise
premise
is conclusion
Inductive: True is most likely true, because it's more on belief, so dealing with maybe 50% chance of a full truth.
Deductive: True is true for sure, because its based on certainty.
There are also weak and strong arguments as the following arguments show:
- Atheists do not believe in the bible.
- Atheists are evil.
Conclusion: That is a weak inductive argument, as there is not enough proof or evidence to support such.
Logic does not care about truth, as the following example shows:
- Peoples who don't believe in the bible are evil.
- Atheists do not believe in the bible.
Conclusion: Atheists are evil
This is a strong deductive argument, so the conclusion is true, but just for the group of believers or theists, hence logic does not deal with “truth as a form of reality”, but just supports a true conclusion from the statements made.
False premises can still conclude into true conclusion, and true premises can still conclude into false conclusions.
Examples:
Valid
- All soft drinks are beverages
- Coke is a soft drink
Conclusion: Coke is a beverage
Invalid
- All soft drinks are beverages
- Coke is a beverage
Conclusion: Coke is a soft drink
- All cats are animals
- Dogs are animals
Conclusion: Dogs are cats
The invalidity relies on on the structure, thus two valid and true arguments can conclude into a false conclusion.
Examples:
Invalid
- All soft drinks are beverages
- San Miguel Beer is a beverage
Conclusion: San Miguel Beer is a soft drink (which is false)
Valid
- False.. All soft drinks are beers
- False... San Miguel Beer is a soft drink
Conclusion: San Miguel Beer is a beer .... (which is correct)
Invalid
- False...Soft drinks are solid
- False... Coke is solid
Conclusion: Coke is solid .... (which is false)
In a valid argument the premises necessary imply the conclusion, and if the premises are true, the conclusion CANNOT be false.
Fallacies:
In a fallacy the premises do not provide enough support to the conclusion.
It does not say anything about weather the conclusion /premise is true or not.
There is a golden rule for fallacies:
“Never start up with fallacies, as you end up as a “know it all”. This is a mistake done a lot.
A formal fallacy is the denial of a conditional statement
A concludes into B.
A is questionable,
so B is questionable
Example:
The ground is wet, so the rain has fallen
This sounds logic, yet its questionable, as there are other ways for the ground to get wet.
To make the argument valid, the conclusion has to be denied or questioned
Valid
- Peoples who believe in god are good peoples
- This person is not a god person
Conclusion: This person does not believe in god
Invalid
- He believes in god
- He is a good person
Conclusion: Only peoples who believe in god are good
Affirmation of the consequence
A therefor B
B
A
Examples:
Invalid
- Objective moral values exist
- God exists
Conclusion: Moral values exist, because god exists.
- Coke is a soft drink
- Sprite is a soft drink
Conclusion: Coke is sprite
Valid
- Coke is a soft drink
- Soft drinks are beverages
Conclusion: Coke is a beverage
One has to look at the structure, and has to question the premises, not the conclusion, as the conclusion can still look true or be true.
Informal fallacies
A relevance: Premises and conclusions
Appeal to force:
- If you don't want to fail my class, you buy my food
- If you wont believe you will burn in hell
(Conclusion: What does one have to do with the other?)
Appeals to emotions:
- You don't love me anymore, cause you don't buy me chocolate anymore
- If you don't want to burn in hell you must join the church services
Appeal to the peoples: Directly or indirectly
Personal attack:
You are ugly so your arguments are ugly.
Abusive:
My opponent suggests that lowering taxes will be a good idea. This is coming from a woman who eats a pint of Ben and Jerry’s each night!
Circumstantial:
You deny religion, just to make Atheism stronger.
Hypocrisy:
Priests talk about other peoples sex, whilst they are offenders or practice secret intercourse, or no sex.
Accident:
Statement: Nursery is a good course!
Reply: “So its a good course for me.”
Conclusion: But maybe it is not good for that person.
Straw man:
Statement: Darwinism says men come from apes.
Reply: “I have not seen that happen.”
Conclusion: He or she said that without knowing that that was not literally meant. The person is now making his or her own story out of it.
Red herring:
During a death penalty argument .... but now putting the relatives of the executed in front, so diverting the issue.
Destruction:
Changing the topic.
Fallacies of weak induction
Appeal to an unqualified authority:
Asking an architect about a medical issue.
Appeal to ignorance:
“Can you prove that god is not talking to me? No? So be quiet, as you can't argue.”
Hasty generalization:
“I heard of hooligans in your organization, so your community is not good. I should therefor not join.”
False cause:
I took my medicines and I prayed to god. In the morning I woke up and I was ok, so god is great.
Slippery slope:
Giving a big slope of probable, but most likely not to happen issues.
Weak analogy:
Peoples say pornography is bad, but the same peoples also they say: “Look at those nice breasts.” or “I'd lie to have her on bed.”
So anything can be made bad.
Presumption
Begging the question:
When will you stop stealing from your clients?
Complex questioning:
The bible is true as it's the word of god.
False deconomy:
You are either with us or against us
Suppressed evidence:
Shutting your ears
Equivocation:
It has been said that god is love, also that love is blind. So god is blind?
Composition:
Everything that you see came from something, therefor the all universe came from something.
Division:
- Wood can be destroyed my termites, thus my house can be destroyed by this termite.
- UNICEF is a non profit organization, Thus all members are good.
This is definitely a compressed view of the presentation given by Don Paez. The two hours felt like one, as the way of presenting the topic was lively, joyful and interesting. Not only was the heat of Manila blown away by the wind, but it had no more relevance during his lecture.
PATAS is not just an Online community, but a society that brings peoples together on the real stage of life.
By Thomas Fleckner
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