freecounterpoint: It would be a real shame if this guy saw your posts, AI

Sunday, September 07, 2008

It would be a real shame if this guy saw your posts, AI

4 comments:

My Frontier Thesis said...: Here's an addition I've been thinking about for Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary (I don't think he's addressed it yet):

A person is illogical if they are disagreeable. Upon disagreeing with them, say, "You are not being logical." Calling them "insane," or accusing them of deploying ad hominems or erecting "strawmen" is also acceptable. Do this to win debates.; 9/07/2008 9:41 AM
Arelcao Akleos said...: But, MFT, there is a huge caveat that needs to be addressed. A person is illogical if he makes a mistake in logic. The discovery of such a mistake should, rationally, lead to disagreement [at least on that point where the error in logic plays a part]. So it would make perfect sense to say, upon here disagreeing with him, "You are not being logical". Which is a far cry from calling him insane, or of deploying ad hominem arguments, erecting strawmen, etc... [these other accusations may indeed be justified, but the justification has to be more, or at least other, than simply errors in logic].
Another caveat, and one which plays a part as "pun" in the definition proposed but which should be explicitly realized as such, is the elision from "disagreeable" in the first sentence to "disagreement" in the second sentence.
Finding someone disagreeable is a personal/emotional reaction and bears no causal relationship to whether or not one actually agrees with that person.
I agree with a fair amount of what George Will says, for example, but I find him very disagreeable. As you may remember, at the University of the Megalopolis of the State of the Twin Cities, there were a number of randomly oriented graduate students I had serious disagreements with; yet for the most part I found them most agreeable.

But enough of Parsing Bierce. A Devil's Dictionary should be Tricksy....or it would not be the Devil's at all .; 9/07/2008 11:53 AM
Arelcao Akleos said...: Given that there are some folk who do insist on judging disagreeable all those who are not in lockstep agreement with them,the relevant sentence needs a "need", i.e.

"Finding someone disagreeable is a personal/emotional reaction and need bear no causal relationship to whether or not one actually agrees with that person. "; 9/07/2008 11:57 AM
My Frontier Thesis said...: It's also possible to have several definitions for one entry. So far, it may look like this (I've synthesized your caveat with the first entry):

1) A person is illogical if they are disagreeable. Upon disagreeing with them, say, "You are not being logical." Calling them "insane," or accusing them of deploying ad hominems, erecting "strawmen," or tell them there are huge caveats in their logic that remain unaddressed is also acceptable. Do this to win debates.

2) Finding someone disagreeable is a personal/emotional reaction and need bear no causal relationship to whether or not one actually agrees with that person.

AA, it's through this kind of discourse that will make the Devil's Dictionary all the more philosophically devious. Remember, the devious of the Devil's Dictionary stems from not being too precise, but rather identifying universals with off-the-cuff accuracy. Then we need to think about just disappearing into the Mexican wilderness without warning, and without a trace.

And remember what P.J. O'Rourke says about the dictionary: it's a great work because, at the very bottom, it's hilarious.; 9/07/2008 4:32 PM

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