If "original poster" referred to me as the insta-gator, I wasn't being sarcastic, although now that you mention it, I can see how it might have been taken that way, by several readers.

Actually (and I have hesitated to say anything to point any fingers at anyone, so don't take this as if I am) ... I got really tired of reading 'hot-topic' posts where people were tossing around blatant made-up un-truths like "yea, well, the United States discovered the Moon, so it's ok for us to murder 150,000 Iraqi civilians, while we are not-usurping the oil fields! So there! .." or something equally moronic and misleading. That prompted me to think that instead of just thinking "what a moron", maybe I might get other people to look for the facts instead of contributing more fecal matter for me to step in ... so to speak.

As this thread has progressed, I found myself attempting not just to counter the lies and ask for help to improve the quality of the forums, but also thinking that the "morons" must have had a point, of course, and that they probably just couldn't express it very well ... perhaps because they were trained from childhood not to use facts but to use non-facts to support their arguments ... and maybe they need help more than I do.

Facts are overrated. Facts can be believed or disbelieved. The truth on the other hand, is believable by it's very nature.

"That’s where truth comes from – the gut. Facts come from the brain — and some people think that makes facts better. Bud did you know you have more nerve endings in your stomach than in your brain? You can look it up." - Stephen Colbert

I didn't look it up, but it feels right.   

HHHMMMMM? Americans finding or landing on the moon. Truth be told it was us Canadians who actually launched that oversized rock. JUST THOUGHT YOU WOULD ALL LIKE TO KNOW.  

Yea, there was an excess of naval lint plaquing Canada, so they rolled it all up into one big ball and cast it into space!

I see read the same article  But joking aside(IS THIS ME WRITING THIS)Elwopo does have somewhat of a valid point.

Sorry, but I find wikipedia to be almost useless. I've encountered numerous errors, as well as odd things (like when I was searching information about Josef Stalin, and typed in his title 'Vozhd', only to find it linked me to a roleplaying monster. When that happens it really makes me question Wiki). Sure it's good to find links, but the mere fact anyone can edit an article places reliability in doubt.

I noticed that too. I typed in the word "specious" to see if I used it correctly, and came up with a definition for "fake".

I think, first impression only, that might be because it is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary or something more specific ... Or possibly it just hasn't had enough detail added to it yet to have all the (relatively)little things available.

Say, have you considered researching how to add entries? Several people have mentioned it here, and although I would never have the guts to do it (maybe) ... someone who actually cares about a certain detail should obviously be the one to write it up ...

[edit] You Canucks must have a special secret process for rolling lint up into little (or big) balls ... what is it?   [/edit]

from dictionary.com:



so specious can mean fake. as for "Vozhd", wikipedia redirects to articles based on who sets up the redirection first, so in theory it usually redirects to the most common target of a search. if you hit up wikipedia in Russian, you'd might have gone right where you had meant to.

no wikipedia isn't perfect.



this is partly because there isn't much "factual" agreement among experts of this field. the social sciences and humanities are dominated by disagreement among experts and various differing theories. this is partly because these fields lack the equivalent of a lab in which hypotheses can be tested.

as for how this related to wikipedia, one of the guidelines for wikipedia is to be consice, but these topics don't lend themselves to short articles. trying to survey the strengths and weaknesses of a whole set of approaches and theories to something even as well documented as a war is difficult. i'd recommend Oxford UP's A Very Short Introduction series for brevity that doesn't come at the cost of quality.

i, too, use wikipedia mostly for learning about bio-physical subjects. i also use it to help direct people to an exceedingly cursor explanation of other topics, assuming i don't find wikipedia's articles on the subject to be completely... specious  

wikipedia has no pop-ups or advertising, and when i go there i can be pretty sure that there's something written on a topic i'm curious about. as pretty much everyone in my academic department says, wikipedia is a good starting place.

Initially, I have to admit, I thought the original post was sarcasm as well .... I now understand that ElWhopO didn't mean it that way. I do respect the intent of the post but I honestly cannot consider Wikipedia as anything more than an entertaining site.

As the crux of this post is regarding intellectual empowerment (a noble cause!), the deciphering of bias is one of the most crucial tools the analytical mind possesses. Thus, people's posts on here are laden with bias (expecting them to possess all the facts as deemed by you, is also biased)..... wikipedia is inherently biased.... any and all reports ever written by humans are biased. History is simply the study of bias. Basically, with an awareness of bias, it is simple to not engage in an argument with someone here who is clearly lacking in any fact, or is motivated by an opposing political basis than yourself. The very same fact that we both look at can be interpreted in different ways and thereby be presented by both sides as "fact"!

Understanding why each person interprets the fact as they do provides much greater insight than staking an inviolable claim to truth.

Mistikmind said it best so far for me - facts are overated (paraphrased) they are far from the font of truth - unfettered thought is infinitely more able to adjust to perceiving old problems in new lights!

I see you.  There's another little thing I would like to add, and that is a simple exercise in communication. It makes for a hilarious party-game, too!

In the military, one of my basic classes was communication. The instructor seated about 15 soldiers in a semi-circle facing the front of the room, and gave one person on the end a piece of paper with a statement on it. That person read the statement then gave it back. Then that person whispered it to the next person, and so on to the other end. Then the last person repeated it back to the instructor, who wrote it on the blackboard. Then the instructor gave everyone a copy of the original statement to read. Everyone's first reaction was to laugh-out-loud.

The instructor then proceeded to dissect each stage of mis-communication in a heartless and efficient manner, which was a very effective teaching tool in deed. Nobody was laughing when he got done, but we all made damsure we didn't screw it up the next time, and the exercise more-than-likely contributed to the conservation of lives on the battlefield in the future. Life is not a game, either.

fallacies are only crucial in argument when directly applied to an unassailable certainty or at least a postulated theorum.

Marcus

The usage of "logical fallacies" is surely Floccinaucinihilipilification..

Ironically, the concept of a logical fallacy, is in and of itself, a logical fallacy.... as is my statement for saying so!

Oh how we love relativism!

Does not parse, sorry.



Why would being able to assess something as useless not be of value in a debate? I don't understand...



Huh? How so?

“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist,” Friedrich Nietzsche

The presupposition of a logical fallacy is that there is a correct logical system from which to compare and, more importantly, to judge the fallacious logic. A relativist would say that a logical system is dependent on factors such as your culture, upbringing, cosmology etc. and is only subjectively correct, not objectively.

It's a bit like fish telling ducks that they are doing it all wrong.

I'm not convinced that we're all talking about the same thing here.

Here is a quick primer on the logical fallacies that I was referring to above.

As you can see, there's not much about them that is "relativistic", nor must they be applied to "directly applied to an unassailable certainty or at least a postulated theorum", whatever that's supposed to mean.

I'm very much aware of what a logical fallacy is ghostwes!

I was merely stating that if you judge from a relativists position, then philosophical tools used to judge fallacies are themselves fallacious.

You accept their logic because it is part of your system. However, there is not a single logical system, nor is there a single correct one. So they have no inherent universal legitimacy to be a yardstick for assessing the veracity of a statement.

I'm not actually saying that I agree with it or not, but rather that by looking into Relativism and to a lesser degree Hermeneutics (anthropological toolsets) it is easy to challenge the logical integrity of system behind these "logical fallacies".

I don't mean to sound insulting, but what you are saying sounds rather nonsensical to me, I'm afraid. I'll admit that I am a firm believer in rationality and objective reality, so maybe I'm at a disadvantage here.

Perhaps you could give us an example: an argument where the logical fallacies fail us, and a different logic would be preferred?

Don't worry, I think you've explained why it is nonsensical perfectly.

Rationalism and Relativism are diametric opposites. While Rationalism holds that your reason is the most important method of gaining knowledge, Relativism holds that Reason is simply the sum total of your personal experiences, and therefore entirely subjective.

There really isn't much meaningful dialogue between the two philosophies as both have opposing core positions. That's why it doesn't sound effective to you!


I'll try to give you an example here as requested.... a much cited logical fallacy, argumentum ad ignorantiam.

The Creationist says "I know God exists and you can't prove He doesn't" and the Atheist says "I know God doesn't exist and you can't prove he does!".

Neither side can ever reach understanding. Really though this is exactly what the relativist says.... neither are right, both are simply using their own system of reason and are equally astounded that the other side can make such a ridiculous statement.


Beyond that, there's also a big, messy problem with Causal relationships in that they are completely and utterly culturally imbued - different cultures from across the world have very different cause/effect systems.... I wont be able to quote from it as its years since I read it, but a cornerstone book in Anthropology called "Magic, Witchcraft and Oracles among the Azande" by Evans Pritchard, is a very important insight into cultural inferences that render all thought bound to its own reasoning system.

To heavily summarise it....The Azande have a system of belief that interprets beneficial and negative actions as the work of witchcraft. So if a man is sitting on his veranda and the roof falls and kills him, then everyone knows it is the malicious work of a witch.

Naturally, the skeptical Rationalist will say..... the termites ate the wood, they'd been eating the wood for years and it was only a matter of time before it fell. It was simply chance that he was sitting there when it fell.

The Azande would reply that they know very well that it was the termites that ate the wood, but its the temporal relationship between the event and the man sitting there in which the witchcraft inhabits. They had been eating it for years, why did it fall in the relatively short time he was sitting there as opposed to all the other time when he wasn't?

In our system of belief we denote it as simple chance that the activities occured at the same time. Our system of thought has no better way to define this, we simply cannot express any greater depth of thought into it and assume, therefore, that it is itself a simple event unworthy of attention (a logical fallacy in itself).

So really, all we can actually state from this experience is that our system of reason does not have the capacity to delve into this area in which the Azande have a formulated and, to them, logical cause and effect relationship. We certainly can't use argumentum ad ignorantiam, our ignorance of any greater causal relationship is no evidence against its truth..... Surely then, we must bow to the Azande's greater insight?


Anyway, as I said from the start, by definition all that I have written here is a form of logical fallacy anyway. That's the beauty of these devices, they can be applied liberally when needed, especially with burdens of proof.... because sometimes you simply cannot prove something sufficiently to someone, even when it's readily obvious to you!

Worse, the very same fact can be presented by both sides and construed to mean the exact opposite. Which, if you go back to my first post in this thread, is why I said that instead of trying to convince others of your own veracity, it is more important to learn why other people interpret their facts the way they do, as this gives you a wider insight, than trying to insist upon a sole, inviolable truth.

do relativists really have positions?   

that said, ghostwes, you're approaching things from the perspective of a classical epistemologist. you seem to believe that knowledge can exist as valid or invalid outside of individual human minds and our biases. other perspectives reject this assumption, and view knowledge and the knower as inseparable.

a significant contemporary, relativistic disciplinary counterpart to epistemology is sociology of knowledge.

Relativists do it in a relativist position!

Actually Dystopic, looking at your link, I really should have credited my story above to Michel Foucault... for while Evans-Pritchard was the field anthropolgist, it was Foucault that gave the data its true home!

yes, but don't give Foucault too much credit. i can't deny that he was a brilliant thinker and very insightful, but he made up a lot of his own data. i also think he was too eager to make up jargon. i think a lot of his contributions that are salient for this discussion were also touched on in Frame Analysis (Goffman), The Social Construction of Reality (Berger & Luckmann), and One-Dimensional Man (Marcuse).

Most sociologists and many Anthopologists read Body Ritual among the Nacirema as a great example of how the things we do that seem perfectly rational aren't necessarily so from an outside perspective.

I'm just amazed the guy was so unaware that he didn't use the time sitting on the porch to figure out what the termites were doing, and extrapolate the probable result of the roof falling. Would that be ignorance? Even if the Azande had some sort of taboo about interfering with the termites, he still could have added another post next to the one being eaten, and stabilized the situation.

I sympathize with the Azande ... it would be difficult to keep their society together if they couldn't just laugh out loud at stupidity, and had to implement a cover story to hide their amusement at one of their own members sitting under a rotten roof until it fell on his head! [cough]

"Yea, Bob got killed by a witch [cough] " ... "I know, wasn't it horrible? Poor guy, just sitting there [cough]" ... "He was really good at shooting monkeys with his blowgun [cough]" ... "Yea, he was really smart [cough]"   

You've obviously not had many dealings with termites.... canny wee buggers they are!!

Perhaps one of the termites was the witch!


Dystopic: Bruce Kapferer, the phenomenological Anthropologist, always used to call me Foucault in lessons then expect me to defend myself while he tore Foucault apart. I have a lot of respect for Foucault simply because his arguments are so durable. He's a great example of a relativist *with* a position!!

YeaH! or maybe a specially adapted termite was boring into their brains, and controlling them, and 'Bob' was just part of the evening's entertainment on 'Termite Saturday Night Live' -> watch the stupid human get crushed by a roof [tiny little squeeky laugh-muwhahahaha]

The evil little bastards!!

Actually, I have a real termite problem here at the moment.... perhaps they are hatching some evil plot?

The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men gang aft agley..... but what about termite plans? Perhaps they're super strategists and I am doomed to ignominous, magical, roof-head crushing!!