How necessary is a knowledge of modern logic to the reading of philosophy (or anything else)?

I am going to bring the discussion in the comments section of what is now an old post: "Why Traditional Logic Does Not Employ Truth Tables" back out to the main blog. The interest in my posts on logic, which tend to get a little technical, continues to astound me. Part of the interest in this last one is clearly the fact that the philosopher Ed Feser linked to it. My Sitemeter stats show that clearly. But even before that, my previous post, "The Difference between Traditional and Modern Logic," which just had its three year anniversary, continues to consistently attract more hits than almost any other post on this blog. 

The term "logic" rivals only "science" (about which anything I say seems to invite comment and criticism) and "zombies" as the most popular topics. If I could only devise a post which dealt with all three--imagine what my Google page rating would be!

So here is my response to one of the comments on the "Why Traditional Logic Does Not Employ Truth Tables" post, which will be the first of several.

Leo,

Thanks for your post. Let me take up your comments (and others here) in several posts. Here is the first of these. You say:

"M]uch of logic is usually unnecessary to see basic validity, as many arguments can be seen to be valid or invalid without any conscious analysis. Bringing the entire heft of Aristotle's Logic down an argument like, "My house is painted red, therefore the west wall of my house is painted red," is clearly overkill. All logic is about the more complex arguments.  However, truth tables are very useful in proving theorems like "P V Q === Q V P" (where "===" is used as the symbol for L-equivalence).

I don't know that "all" logic is about more complex arguments. From someone in the academic world, that may be close to being so, especially in modern academic philosophy. Then again, most instances of the use of logic are outside that context and are not even close to being as complicated as that context would require.

I'm sure there are contexts that require a more quantitative treatment, as your example of L-Equivalence illustrates. But, again, this particular illustration seems to me to be required only because L-Equivalence is a concept of equivalence in the field of mathematics. I may need to understand these more quantitative concepts in mathematical logic when I am dealing with modern specialists who are dealing with qualitative concepts in mathematical logic, but in the vast majority of philosophical writings outside this field of specialty it will have no value at all.

I would go further and say that, although I studied mathematical logic in school (and have taught it at the introductory level), the fact is that there is no single instance in all the philosophical writings I have read (or any other writings for that matter), in school and without, that required a knowledge of mathematical logic. A knowledge of traditional logic, on the other hand, was indispensable.

I'm sure that will sound heretical to someone inside the academy, and I admit, as someone who does not operate in that world, to having more than a little impatience with unnecessary academic subtleties. In a world of specialists, any generalist must seem a little primitive.

I hate to sound like such a pragmatist here, but even the vast majority of complex arguments don't require the kind of symbolization that modern logic employs, and my evidence for that is the whole history of philosophical writing, the great majority of which was accomplished, not only without the employment of any kind of modern symbolic calculus, but without the least knowledge of it.

I would also assert that there is a tendency among many modern philosophers to employ symbolism in a way that not only does not clarify anything, but actually obfuscates it. I have no proof of this other than my own experience, but I can think of more than one occasion--in a lecture or some academic article--on which the speaker or author has begun some point by saying "Let P equal ...," a few minutes into which it becomes very evident that, not only did we not need anything to "equal P" in order to understand the point, but that letting something "equal P" actually obfuscated what was not a terribly complex point.

In other words, I think most of the time we just need to let P equal P and go on with our philosophical lives. But I am starting to belly-ache here. I hope you see my point, and you are welcome to try to dispel my ignorance on these points on which I am, far from being an expert, simply an interested observer.

Trump and Bush in Need of Remedial Insult Training

Most people think there are too many insults in the campaign for the Republican nomination for president. I disagree. The problem isn't too many insults: The problem is not enough good ones.

I could tolerate Donald Trump's insults if they at least evidenced some rudimentary level of wit. Unfortunately, what we have seen instead is petty schoolyard taunts. And George Bush is even worse. I mean, "Donald Trump is a jerk"? Really? Is that the best we can do?

Give me Carly Fiorina any day. Her razor sharp retorts are far above the blunt rhetorical instruments of the Trumps and Bushes.

Part of the problem is that we are Americans who don't have a very good mastery of our own language. If you doubt it, listen to a British sportscaster working a soccer game. They're actually literate people. They use words that Americans would have to look up (and ought to). None of the pedestrian descriptions you hear from our publicly-schooled color commentators--they're actually witty and creative.

I think some remedial insult training is in order here. 

One thing these people ought to do is to go and look at some of the classic political and literary comebacks. Here are three of which I am particularly fond:

George Bernard Shaw (a playwright, for the culturally illiterate Americans reading this, at a time when Churchill was low in the polls):  "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend ... if you have one."

Winston Churchill: "Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one."

Or this one:

Lady Astor: "Winston, if you were my husband, I would poison your coffee."

Churchill: "Nancy, if you were my wife, I would drink it."

Or, my personal favorite:

Chesterton (upon meeting up with his old friend Shaw, a militant vegetarian who was skinny as a rail, before a speech): "Shaw, looking at you one would think there was a famine in the land."

Shaw (looking the 400 pound Chesterton up and down): "Chesterton, looking at you, one would think you had caused it."

It's too much to hope for I know. So will have to endure Trump's petty tweets and Bushes low-wit retorts. When is this thing over?

The Solution to College Student Protests

In a time when college students are lucky if the food at the dining commons is edible, students  at Oberlin College are protesting because cafeteria food is not "culturally accurate." This is just the most recent demand by the student PC Police on college campuses, who apparently don't have any real problems to deal with.

A number of critics have described today's college protesters as "infantile," a diagnosis with which I wholeheartedly agree. And I have just the prescription.

When college officials encounter this kind of protest on their campuses, they need to start handing out pacifiers. That's what they're for: To silence the whining.

Campus officials could also designate a morning story time (I suggest Where the Wild Things Are and The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day), and provide mattresses (cheap, uncomfortable ones) for afternoon naps. They could also put those useless diversity bureaucrats to work providing a free diaper service. I suggest having them issue cloth diapers and requiring officials to wash them by hand.

If that doesn't quiet them down, and the equally Politically Correct officials don't have the fortitude to use a hickory switch, then I suggest sending them all to their rooms without dinner.

Or, if there are students from certain places in Southeast Asia, they could go ahead and make the cuisine more authentic by serving other students.

We could learn a little from the French about how to deal with #terrorism

As I was watching the Republican debate Tuesday night, I wondered once again what the men and women who went through the Depression and World War II would think of their country now, which seems to be in full-scale panic mode about the prospect of a terrorist attack.

What would the Greatest Generation think, for example, about whole school districts closing merely because of threats from questionable e-mails (Los Angeles Unified) or because of something someone scrawled on a bathroom wall (our own absurd Eastern KY University).

What would they think about a whole population that can be brought to its emotional knees by one relatively minor terrorist attack?

Fourteen people died in San Bernadino, California at the hands of Islamicist terrorists. The attack was, of course, frightening. 

 

I'm sure that the deaths of the fourteen people in San Bernadino was the most important thing in the world to their family and friends, and that's as it should be. But the rest of us need to get a grip. As an occasion for the personal grief among the people who knew the victims it is cause for grief and outrage, and as a policy matter it is something we surely need to consider carefully and to take sober measures of preventing it from happening again.

 

But ants kill 30 people a year and falling out of bed kills about 450 people a year. Coconuts kill 150 people per year, icicles in Russia 100. In fact, tap water kills 100 people per year. But these things are not covered in long repetitive segments for days on end on CNN.

But in this day and age when full-time newscasts take every outrage and magnify it 100-fold, it is sometimes hard to maintain the proper perspective.

Now this will be received as hard medicine by those of us who are slaves to the news-cycle, where every little event is blown into mammoth proportions and becomes the excuse for hasty and heedless policy prescriptions which are urged on us in urgent tones—and which must be implemented now or we'll all die.

I attribute all of this also to the simple fact that we are spoiled, soft people who live in easy conditions that, in any other place and time, would be thought lax and effeminate.

No one up until our time would have considered a terrorist act of such a limited magnitude to constitute the kind of crisis we now think it is. And anyone suggesting that it was would been told that they need to get a grip and to think about how minor this was in the total scheme of things in a world in which a war (WWII) had just killed from 50 to 80 million people and caused the devastation and homelessness of millions more and where in the decade before that millions were impoverished by bank closures and loss of jobs and where a decade before that some 38 million people were killed in the war (WWI) that was supposed to "end all wars."

Heck, even Korea and the Vietnam War are still within living memory.

People need to stop watching Anderson Cooper and start reading William Shirer. They need to start reading history to give them some kind of context to current events. Of course, that assumes that people can still read, and, if they can, even know that there is history to be read.

Unfortunately, our schools today have performed the cultural equivalent of a lobotomy on a whole people. Now that's a crisis. Somebody ought panic about that.

I'm with the French on this one: Find out who committed the atrocity and kill them. Otherwise, continue to lead your life normally. It's the worst thing you can do to the terrorists.

In fact, the next time I hear about how wimpy the French are, I'm going to remind the imbecilic American person saying it how we, as a matter of course, react to these things compared to the French.

Au revoir.

Yale students signing petition to repeal the First Amendment

Just in case you wondered how far gone our higher education system is:
 

"Brooklyn": (the movie): A Review

On the basis of Joe Morganstern's recent review of "Brooklyn" in the Wall Street Journal, I took my wife to see the movie. It is a story about a young immigrant woman, Eilis (pronounce "Eye-lish") who leaves her mother and sister in Ireland for America in the 1950s, rents a room in a boarding house, gets a job, and meets a young man at a dance with whom she falls in love and gets married. But just as she marries the young Italian plumber, she gets word that her beloved sister has died. Despite the doubts of her husband, who knows the allure of home, she travels back to Ireland to be with her mother, and promptly falls in love with a young Irishman.

How she battles the draw of home and resolves to do the right thing are the chief conflict in the story.

Now if I had read the description I just gave, I would not be terribly interested in seeing the movie. It seems to have a terribly chick flickish quality to it. But Morgenstern's review was glowing. And then I looked it up on Rotten Tomatoes, where its positive review percentage was 99 percent. When was the last time you saw that? And then, of course, there was the excellent trailer.

I worried that, after reading all of these gushing reviews, it couldn't possibly meet my expectations. But I didn't have to worry.

"Brooklyn" is what I call a "small movie"—that is, a movie about something we consider of little consequence: one young woman, a speck in a sea of such people migrating across the ocean for a better life. We talk incessantly about the big issues—immigration, war and peace, hunger—and think they are the important thing. But it is the "small" stories of one or two people that really tells us something important about reality.

Everything about "Brooklyn" is astounding. The story takes place both in Brooklyn and Ireland. And both settings are utterly convincing. I love movies that are able to invoke another time and place in a believable way. Who needs a time machine when you can go back in time with a movie like this and see things as you are convinced they really must have been like?

There is none of the anachronism you see in so many attempts to recreate history where the attitude about the world is just the common, contemporary attitude put in the mind and mouth of a character from another time (like Ridley Scott's "The Kingdom of Heaven," in which Orlando Bloom's character spoils the whole otherwise admirable movie by give a deflating politically correct speech about how unimportant the land they are defending (Jerusalem) is. No person of the time would have said what was put in his mouth. It was utterly disappointing).

Here you will see people in the mid-20th century as they really were, not gussied up for early 21st century viewers. There Eilis herself, with whom the viewer simply falls in love. She is innocent but determined. The obviously Irish Saoirse Ronan plays Eilish with an expressionless grace that is hard to describe. And in fact she does what every other aspect of this movie does—from the characters to the director: namely, to never overplay their hand.

There are scenes that in the hands of any other director would have been mined for every ounce of sentimentalism they could produce. But director Tom McCarthy resists this temptation at every turn. Not that there aren't tears shed a number of times (by both the characters and the audience); there are. But the sentiment is never over-sentimentalized—there is not a single instance in which the viewer is called upon to respond in any other way than that which is fully backed up by the events on the screen. The movie is like a finely cooked French meal: Every flavor is perfectly balanced.

Eilis' landlady, Mrs. Kehoe, plays a pivotal part in this story. We are brought back again and again throughout the movie to her dinner table, where she dishes out admonition and advice to the young, sometimes wayward (in one case completely clueless) girls under her roof. She is the quintessence of good sense and, in a stern way, good humor. Contrast her with the Irish shop owner, Mrs. Kelly, for whom Eilis had worked while in Ireland, a cruel, conniving woman, whose machinations when Eilis returns to her original home are the occasion for Eilis' realization of what she must do.

Eilis has not told anyone in Ireland that she is already married, a fact that looms over her trip home. The anxiety that is produced as she falls harder and harder for a young Irish pub owner is made all the more unbearable by the sympathy we have for Eilis—and the empathy we have for her affection for the young Irish man whose subtle and honest attractions we can sympathize with. But when she is invited to the marriage of her childhood friend, they take their vows—vows of loyalty and love that she herself has taken back in America, unbeknownst to the young man sitting at her side—an irony the camera underscores when it refocuses from the bride and groom in the front to Eilis, sitting in the second row behind them, her own heart being pierced by the words she is hearing from the priest.

Again, the expression on Eilis face does not change, but we know she feels the irony as deeply as we do.

But it is when her former employer, Mrs. Kelly, discovers Eilis' secret and tries to use it to manipulate her that she realizes what she must do. This is when the tension breaks and we know that she has decided to do the right thing and return to her husband in America. It is the evil intent of Mrs. Kelly that brings about Eilis' return to the good. How evocative of real life is that? Who says that evil does not have its purpose in the ultimate end of things?

We are heartbroken for the young Irishman who has fallen in love with her—and who has been given every reason to believe it will be consummated. And again, our sorrow is not exploited by the director, who shows him to us, in the lovely house his parents have vacated for him, in the anticipation that she will help him refill it, reading the letter she has sent to him telling him the truth, and informing him that she has gone back to America.

Eilis' makes mistake after mistake, and she pays for each one of them. But despite her failings, she rights herself. She returns to America and to her husband.

There are aspects of this movie that remind me of a Jane Austen story. But the difference is this: In a Jane Austen story, all the loose ends are tied up. Austen begins with an ordered world, into which disharmony is introduced, which resolves finally into a new harmonious order. "People die," as Flannery O'Connor once quipped, "but no one gets hurt." Austen's view of reality is the view from 50,000 feet. It can seem unrealistic, but that is because she shows us reality from an eternal perspective, in which there really is an ultimate resolution to all things.

But in "Brooklyn," people do get hurt. All the loose ends are not tied up. There is damage that for some characters will last a lifetime. But there is beauty too—sometimes in the very events which seem the most tragic. There is comfort here along with the pain—as Kentucky poet James Still once phrased it, a "punishing comfort." It is the view from the ground: Our view here and now. And what we see in this story is that amidst all the rubble that we leave along the way of life, there are plenty of flowers growing. 

Why Spelling Matters: L. A. school district didn't notice capitalization error in terrorist threat

This is beautiful. The entire Los Angeles Unified School District shut down today because of an e-mail terrorism threat from someone who identified himself as a jihadist. But New York schools received the same threat and considered it a hoax.

Why? Because of a spelling error.

Here is NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton, explaining one of the reasons New York decided not to close its schools:

Bratton said one reason authorities believed the email was a hoax was because the word Allah was not capitalized: "The language in the email would lead us to believe that this is not a jihadist initiative... That would be incredible to think that any jihadist would not spell Allah with a capital 'A.'"

So the literate police in New York noticed something that the semi-literate educators in L.A. missed, causing the huge West coast school district to lose a whole school day.

The Grammar Guy: Should one accept the singular "they"? The Washington Post says, "Yes." I say "No"

Below is an interesting discussion I had with Steven Greydamus this morning on his Facebook page on the issue of the singular "they." Steven had posted an article from MentalFloss.com about the Washington Post Style Guide including the singular "they" (as a way to avoid "he" or "she" or "he/sh"/"he or she, etc. in noun/verb agreement) as an acceptable English form. Here is the discussion:

Martin Cothran Another sign of the decline of Western culture.

Like · Reply · 1 hr

Steven D. Greydanus Martin: What part of "Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Lewis Carroll, Kipling, and C.S. Lewis" is confusing to you? Not to mention the King James Bible! Shakespeare and the King James Bible practically ARE the English language. Not to mention Chaucer, Spenser, Robert Lewis Stevenson, Walt Whitman, Shaw, Edith Wharton, and George Orwell. If these are all indicative the "decline of Western culture," pray tell when was the height?

Like · Reply · 1 · 1 hr

Martin Cothran I wish I could accept your noble argument. However (and the story you posted completely ignored this), the reason we are even talking about this is not because anyone is trying to mimic the greats, but because we are neutering the language. The reason we are being forced to use "they" is because it is considered politically incorrect to use the generic "he." So our choices are "he/she," "he or she," "she" (a common, mostly academic affectation), or "they." We are talking about this because of the political manipulation of our language. That may be fine with you, but I'm sticking with Jacques Barzun on this one, and they can pry the generic "he" out of my cold, dead, editor's hand.

Like · Reply · 1 hr

Steven D. Greydanus Wishing to preserve generic "he" is one thing, and wishing to defend Western civilization against the forces of inclusivism may be noble; however, rejecting singular "they" as grammatically wrong because it aids the inclusivists is unhistorical and, um, aphilological? Language is what we have made it, and plural "they" is not a corruption. End of story.

Like · Reply · 1 · 1 hr

Shane Coombs It's too early on a weekend for me to decide which side of the argument this favors, but I think it's more accurate to say that ALL language is corruption. The way languages develop, just about every word and rule forms from the corruption of earlier ones.

Like · Reply · 53 mins

Martin Cothran Well, I was being intentionally hyperbolic, but I guess there was no way for you to know that. Still, I didn't know there were prescriptive philological and historical rules for the acceptance of linguistic innovations that one could be said to violate. If there are, can we change them in the name of innovation? If I were arguing for usage as the criterion upon which to judge the acceptability of linguistic innovation, I would stay away from invoking prescriptive rules. It can do nothing but undermine my argument. Language may be "what we have made it," (which is true only because it is a tautology), but the question here is whether we SHOULD change or accept a change in official English. Your argument, I think, is that we should accept it if it has precedent among the great English writers of the past. I guess I am thinking that if we use that principle, we will have opened a linguistic Pandora's Box. One look at Shakespeare's English, incredible as it was in its context, should be a warning against it. Chaucer should stop you in your tracks. For example, should we accept Shakespeare's spelling as a part of officially acceptable English?

Like · Reply · 38 mins · Edited

Martin Cothran Shane, in a sense I agree with you, but I can tell you as someone having been involved in education for a number of years that the official rules do serve a useful purpose. You can't just accept anything. It is almost a cultural necessity to have some commonly-accepted reference point to which everyone can appeal in times of dispute. I'm not arguing for slavish adherence to a set of rules that were handed down from Sinai (or that inhabit Plato's realm of the ideal forms), but I'm thinking that Catholics of all people should appreciate the role of a central authority which exercises a sort of centripetal linguistic force.

Like · Reply · 35 mins

The college president who criticized campus protesters actually knows what education is

Here is Everett Piper, President of Oklahoma Wesleyan University in Tulsa, explaining his questioning of the adult status of recent college campus protesters.

Imagine: A college administrator who actually knows what education is. He's talking about the liberal arts, he's using words like "Truth," "Goodness," and "Beauty"--he even quotes Chesterton.

 Does anyone know where we can find any more like him?

Ten Great Christian Novels (and a few others you might to check out)

Here is the introduction to my list of great Christian novels at Memoria Press' site:

The following is a list, not of the ten greatest Christian novels, since I haven't read all the novels ever written, but at least ten of the greatest. Any one of these would make a great Christmas present for the reader in your family (hopefully there are more than one). These are not children's books, of course, but they are books that an adult or even a well-read, classically educated highschooler could read for profit and enjoyment. They are also books that warrant spending a little extra money on and getting a nice, hardback edition, maybe one with nice illustrations—one someone could hand down to his children or grandchildren. I have included in each case a comment on a good audio version of each book, where this is one, but I do not intend this as a substitute for reading the book. I find it helpful—with books that one should read more than once (and all these books meet that criterion)—to both read and listen to them. These are two quite different experiences and you will notice quite different things about the story. 

See the list here.

#UK Covers Up a Historical Mural, and Other Acts of the Liberal Cultural Taliban

The University of Kentucky today covered a mural painted by Ann Rice O’Hanlon eighty years ago because it portrays slaves working in a field. "The reason given," said Kentucky writer Wendell Berry yesterday in an opinion article in Lexington Herald-Leader protesting the decision, "is only that it shows people doing what they actually did. Black people did work in tobacco fields. Black musicians did play for white dancers. Indians did seriously threaten the settlers at Bryan’s Station."

If we're going to start covering up images suggestive of past misbehavior—behavior that did happen, despite our desire to cover it up, can we now cover up our UK insignias on account of its having repeatedly (and successfully) been sued for racial discrimination in hiring and firing? Or how about UK's mismanagement of Robinson Forest, a 14,786 tract of forest left in trust to UK, 3,885 acres of which it allowed to be mined or leased for strip mining and 800 more acres it more recently tried to make available for clear cut logging?

Let he who is without sin cover the first mural.

The action by UK is a part of a larger movement of people who think that the proper response to uncomfortable aspects of our history is to cover it up by covering up images, changing names on buildings, and eliminating or destroying historical markers and sites.

This is all accomplished under the assumption that, in destroying the evidence of our past failures, we somehow strike a blow for justice; that in destroying the records of our past, we somehow rectify it.

Soon no one will know our historical crimes. And we can all pretend that nothing bad ever happened.

All this is our own cultural equivalent of the Taliban's destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan or ISIL's destruction of mosques, tombs, and churches. How can we condemn them for doing the same thing we ourselves do?

What will we do, twenty or thirty years down the road, when we become embarrassed about how we acted in trying to erase our own history? Destroy the records of the destruction of our past?

How absurd we are going to seem to our historical selves?

Crybullies Aren’t Just for College: On Corporations and LGBTQ Political Correctness

Crybullies Aren’t Just for College: On Corporations and LGBTQ Political Correctness. Calls for “Safe Spaces” on campus don’t just threaten the future of academia. The same mindset seeks to silence dissent and respectful disagreement in business as well.
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