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Old August 23rd, 2010 #21
Roy
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Strictly speaking the ad hominem means the argument that the character of a person uttering a statement is a determinate factor in the truth of their statement. In other words, "Hitler said it so it must be wrong".
So if I understand this right, ad hominems are invalid when the topic has nothing to do with the person's character. However, an ad hominem attack is valid when it's a matter of the person's reliability as a source of truthfulness. So, let's say someone is a gang member and he's a witness in a prosecutor's case against another gang member. Calling him a gang member is logically sound because it calls into question his giving reliable testimony against a fellow gang member. (Not an ad hominem). But say, if you're in a debate with the guy and he says 2+2 = 4, calling him a gang member will be an ad hominem logical fallacy.

Did I get it right? Because "ad hominem" means in Latin, "to the man" but depending on the situation, a statement "to the man" may or may not be a logical fallacy, depending on the circumstances.
 
Old August 23rd, 2010 #22
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Something that's always intrigued me about college logic classes is this: There's an underlying assumption that you must be logical to convince someone to believe in your point of view. I don't think that's true.

All you have to do is look at what the advertising companies do to get people to buy a product... it's usually a combination of product selling points (logic) plus some emotion and sexuality. It obviously depends on the product, for cars, you'll hear more stats touting their product (mpg and engine power) for something like beer you'll likely see some sexy babe in a bikini (not logical). They don't advertise cigarettes as much as they used to, but the Marlboro man was part of a highly successful ad campaign, yet there was really no logical connection between cowboys and tobacco. I suppose that would fall into the "false association" category of advertising.

The point I wanted to make though, is that just because something isn't logical, that doesn't mean that it's not effective at convincing people of something. If you really want to get at the truth, logic and observation is the way to go. If you just want to convince people, then I'd go with the method the advertising pros use: logic and emotion together.


Lastly, for Alex: On one hand you seem to like the ad hominem as a method of asserting your point of view, on the other you ban people using the grand-daddy of all ad hominems, falsely calling someone a Jew on the forum. Isn't there a bit of a disconnect here?
 
Old August 23rd, 2010 #23
William Pace
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So if I understand this right, ad hominems are invalid when the topic has nothing to do with the person's character. However, an ad hominem attack is valid when it's a matter of the person's reliability as a source of truthfulness. So, let's say someone is a gang member and he's a witness in a prosecutor's case against another gang member. Calling him a gang member is logically sound because it calls into question his giving reliable testimony against a fellow gang member. (Not an ad hominem). But say, if you're in a debate with the guy and he says 2+2 = 4, calling him a gang member will be an ad hominem logical fallacy.

Did I get it right? Because "ad hominem" means in Latin, "to the man" but depending on the situation, a statement "to the man" may or may not be a logical fallacy, depending on the circumstances.
That is 99% right. However the "valid" use of the ad hominem is still technically fallacious. That said, fallacious from the standpoint of formal logic does not mean wrong. Logic is like mathematics or science in that it has strict parameters for what counts as logic which makes it inherently limited. There is "real life logic" which you might call common sense which is generally reliable.

Typically a person who starts bringing up logical fallacies and holds your argument to the strictest logical scrutiny is trying to deny common sense. You might call it an irrational appeal to logic. Due to my position I really hate these kinds of people. Kids take intro to logic and suddenly they think they have all the answers.

This is not to say that logic isn't useful. It is. But logic mostly applies to what we call "matters of fact". Arguments over anything else are going to veer into ambiguity which logic is not equipped to deal with.
 
Old August 23rd, 2010 #24
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Lastly, for Alex: On one hand you seem to like the ad hominem as a method of asserting your point of view, on the other you ban people using the grand-daddy of all ad hominems, falsely calling someone a Jew on the forum. Isn't there a bit of a disconnect here?
No. The rule bans calling people jews who aren't jews. That's lying or sloppiness, not ad hominem argument. It can't be argument to the man if the man is actually a roseate spoonbill.
 
Old August 23rd, 2010 #25
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Originally Posted by Roy View Post
Something that's always intrigued me about college logic classes is this: There's an underlying assumption that you must be logical to convince someone to believe in your point of view. I don't think that's true.

All you have to do is look at what the advertising companies do to get people to buy a product... it's usually a combination of product selling points (logic) plus some emotion and sexuality. It obviously depends on the product, for cars, you'll hear more stats touting their product (mpg and engine power) for something like beer you'll likely see some sexy babe in a bikini (not logical). They don't advertise cigarettes as much as they used to, but the Marlboro man was part of a highly successful ad campaign, yet there was really no logical connection between cowboys and tobacco. I suppose that would fall into the "false association" category of advertising.

The point I wanted to make though, is that just because something isn't logical, that doesn't mean that it's not effective at convincing people of something. If you really want to get at the truth, logic and observation is the way to go. If you just want to convince people, then I'd go with the method the advertising pros use: logic and emotion together.


Lastly, for Alex: On one hand you seem to like the ad hominem as a method of asserting your point of view, on the other you ban people using the grand-daddy of all ad hominems, falsely calling someone a Jew on the forum. Isn't there a bit of a disconnect here?
Yeah definitely. People in the business of persuading people like advertising executives and lawyers are much better off studying psychology than logic. We get a lot of pre law students in philosophy departments and what I tell them is logic is like a game. For logic to work at persuasion both sides must know and accept the rules of logic. That is not how real life works.

I'd also say that over 90% of the population does not have the genetic capacity to think logically. Interestingly the people who really benefit from studying logic are scientists. Double majors in philosophy and a hard science tend to go very far in their fields.
 
Old August 23rd, 2010 #26
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I'm a professor of philosophy and I have taught logic courses in the past though it is not my specialty.

In my kind of educated opinion the answer is yes and no.

In the strictest sense of deductive logic the ad hominem is not valid. For example if an evil man says the sky is blue him being evil doesn't mean he is wrong. To use the academic terminology the "truth value" of a statement has no relationship with the character of the person uttering the statement.
That's certainly true, but, really, who ever makes that kind of argument?

I'm not sure precisely what I'm driving at, and maybe you with your background can help, but what I'm driving off is an inchoate sense that the common bias among your class - academics and the press - against ad hominem argument is somehow linked to their general campaign against what they call stereotypes and prejudice. Which is reflected in their refusal to place, for example, crime stats in racial context. And the general public-school bias in favor of self-esteem and self-expression and against thought, which is generalization, ie stereotyping, prejudice, all the other pattern recognition the powers that be hate for obvious reasons. So they emphasize this formal logic (which smacks of Rawls's Original Position) as the logic equivalent of non-discrimination. That's my gut feeling. In the real world, considering the source is natural and good, and part of a package deal. It's the why that goes with the what.

I did a search, and found this bit, which i think is interesting:

Example of Ad Hominem

Bill: "I believe that abortion is morally wrong."
Dave: "Of course you would say that, you're a priest."
Bill: "What about the arguments I gave to support my position?"
Dave: "Those don't count. Like I said, you're a priest, so you have to say that abortion is wrong. Further, you are just a lackey to the Pope, so I can't believe what you say."


An interesting example to use, because all it does, to me, is reinforce why ad hominem not illogical, not even formally. As soon as you step outside the world of objective fact, you're into hazier areas, and there's no way that you can separate the facts about the source of the argument from the argument itself, particularly in the case of a priest arguing about morality. So that is probably the worst example whoever chose it could have used. There is no objective way to prove that abortion is immoral or moral, so the fact that the arguer is a priest is more relevant than any other fact. And there must be huge number of 'arguments' that fall into this camp: they're not about objective things (morality), or they're about things that can't be proved absolutely. Hence, circumstantial evidence, like the character and motivation of the source of the argument, are the most logical ways to settle them.

Quote:
However in inductive (or if you prefer-probability based) logic the ad hominem may be valid in certain cases. A person being a known liar does call into question the truthfulness of their statements. This is why the ad hominem is admissible in court and rightly so.
I would think it would be hugely relevant in almost every argument involving humans. How often do people advance arguments uncolored by their interests and biases? Almost never. The prejudice against ad hominem is simply another version of the left's prejudice against reason, experience, accurate perception, general thought, and action based on these things, which it would, like the jews and Rawls and their klingons, like to outlaw, and in many ways has outlawed.

Quote:
Pretty much every single one of what we call the "informal fallacies" has a real life situation where it would actually be a reasonable argument. They are only fallacious in deductive/formal logic that calls for certainty in answers. However that kind of logic is mostly limited to mathematics and computer programming. In everyday life we use inductive and informal reasoning far more frequently.
Translated from Latin to English, "Ad Hominem" means "against the man" or "against the person."

An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim). Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting).


This is an interesting characterization of ad hominem. They say it is an "attack," but that itself is the equivalent of an ad hominem attack! Because it can be but isn't necessarily an "attack," it is ANY mention of the man and motives involved. If Jones is in fact a jew or communist, it's not an "attack" if I call him such. In fact, it is the jews and left who pretty much exclusively use personal attacks to avoid arguments. Whites or rightists who use ad hominem use it as part of a package argument. If you have facts on your side, you don't need personal attacks, but they work better if you do use them. If you don't have the facts or common sense on your side, then personal attacks are a good way to hide that. But ad hominem does NOT mean attack although it always described that way. It can be purely accurate-descriptive-factual. My conclusion is that ad hominem is necessary and neutral, and in no way inherently illogical. To call it fallacious seems to me a deliberate attempt to prejudice its proper use by pretending it is intended to serve a purpose it doesn't fit. That ad hominem attacks, true attacks, can be misused as a way, perhaps the only way, to keep facts a certain party wants hidden from emerging into discussion proves only that ah is a preferred technique of the desperate and dishonest. But that in no way proves anything about ad hominem's nature, merely that it can be misused. It can also be used properly, and when used that way is prefectly logical. Ad hominem is not argument, so it cannot be fallacious. The claim that its use is a logical fallacy is itself a dishonest technique used by little men who prefer to keep hiding behind curtains. The dictionary insists that ad hominem is a fallacious argument, because it is based on false inference. That is not accurate. It is, rather, a mischaracterization of ad hominem, and in my opinion a deliberate one, ginned up by the usual suspects for the usual reasons. Ad hominem, used properly, makes no inference at all. It provides supporting evidence for those who trying to draw an inference about something else by helping establish the likelihood that the formal claim is true, based on knowlege about its source and his motivations. It is clear that the positive use of ad hominem would be found among people with no fear of open debate, with all facts laid out and discussed, whereas, by contrast, the negative use of ad hominem would be found among disputants afraid of debating the evidence. That ad hominem can be used dishonestly does not change the fact that it is fundamentally an intellectually valid and respectable analytical tool.
 
Old August 23rd, 2010 #27
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It's the ultimate anti semitic way to argue and they know it. Because Jews have such a predictable and uniform way about them and of course their actions its just too easy to use an Ad Hominem argument against them.

When you do, most people get it......

"Are you REALLY surprised that he did/said that? He's a JEW"

A statement like that holds water by the very nature of Jews and their actions over the past 3000 years and most people "get it".
 
Old August 23rd, 2010 #28
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I'm not sure precisely what I'm driving at, and maybe you with your background can help, but what I'm driving off is an inchoate sense that the common bias among your class - academics and the press - against ad hominem argument is somehow linked to their general campaign against what they call stereotypes and prejudice. Which is reflected in their refusal to place, for example, crime stats in racial context. And the general public-school bias in favor of self-esteem and self-expression and against thought, which is generalization, ie stereotyping, prejudice, all the other pattern recognition the powers that be hate for obvious reasons. So they emphasize this formal logic (which smacks of Rawls's Original Position) as the logic equivalent of non-discrimination. That's my gut feeling. In the real world, considering the source is natural and good, and part of a package deal. It's the why that goes with the what.
I believe the source of the problem you are observing is the intentional misrepresentation of inductive arguments as deductive arguments.

In highly simplistic terms deduction is reasoning from universals to particulars while induction is reasoning from particulars to universals. However there are some quirks to that. Deduction is reasoning with certainty as you have all the information. Induction is only reasoning with probability as you do not have all the information.

Here are some examples:

1. Deductive argument

All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore Socrates is mortal.

2. Inductive argument.

Most men are heterosexual. Socrates is a man. Therefore Socrates is most likely a heterosexual.

There are different ways to refute both kinds of arguments. A quirk of deductive arguments based on universal terms is that just one example to the contrary invalidates the entire argument. How do you disprove the statement, "All men are mortal"? You find just one entity that belongs to the category man and not the category mortal. The entire argument collapses in the face of even a little contradictory evidence.

The academia/media preference against ad hominems is the attempt to cast all arguments for race realism as deductive arguments.

If I say all blacks are criminals all they have to do is find one black who isn't a criminal and I'm refuted.

But we don't make deductive arguments. We make inductive arguments. Race realism arguments are based on probability, averages and percentages. In inductive logic the exception to the rule does not invalidate the rule.

That should be your canned reply

In inductive logic the exception to the rule does not invalidate the rule.

What they are doing is a straw man, the intentional misrepresentation of your argument. Nobody ever said all blacks are criminals. Not all lions are man eaters either but do you want them to run wild in your neighborhood?
 
Old August 23rd, 2010 #29
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A professor of Philosophy on VNN! How cool is that!
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Old August 23rd, 2010 #30
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As for the rest of what you say I believe I have an alternative.

For an actual logical discussion with an aim towards productivity I don't think character and motivation are the most important factors. I think the most important thing is clarity of terms.

If somebody says "I think x is immoral" the first thing I want to know is what they think morality is and what it is based on. For example most people think morality is "whatever god says" but that doesn't make sense to me. Even if there was a god that would be arbitrary. Would you want your moral code to be arbitrary, quite literally whatever the strongest man can force the rest of us to obey?

Some would say, "morality is the golden rule". My question would be: why do you believe you should follow the golden rule?

My specialty is meta-ethics (arguing about the fundamental nature of right/wrong/good/evil/moral/immoral). So this is of particular interest to me. In my experience the vast majority of people do not think at all about what their morality is and why they should follow it. They just say "this is my morality".

Of course in a debate with a enemy or other situation where your audience can be expected to not respect or not understand logic this is of limited utility.
 
Old August 23rd, 2010 #31
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A professor of Philosophy on VNN! How cool is that!
There are not many of us left. I might quite literally be one of the last young straight white male academics to ever get hired in this country. Affirmative action in PhD programs is out of control compared to even 10 years ago.
 
Old August 23rd, 2010 #32
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There are not many of us left. I might quite literally be one of the last young straight white male academics to ever get hired in this country. Affirmative action in PhD programs is out of control compared to even 10 years ago.
I believe if you have PhD in Philosophy or Math you are super intelligent. I bet everybody is excited to have you posting here on VNNF. So, do you also believe in the ideology of Racialism? Tell us more about yourself. How did you find VNN? I'm sure everybody would love to know more about you.

They call Wittgenstein one of the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. Is he really that great? I think Hegel was the last great philosopher and after that philosophy has become pedestrian.
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Old August 23rd, 2010 #33
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I believe if you have PhD in Philosophy or Math you are super intelligent. I bet everybody is excited to have you posting here on VNNF. So, do you also believe in the ideology of Racialism? Tell us more about yourself. How did you find VNN? I'm sure everybody would love to know more about you.

They call Wittgenstein one of the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. Is he really that great? I think Hegel was the last great philosopher and after that philosophy has become pedestrian.
Are you non American?

The vast majority of American philosophy programs are all analytic philosophy all the time so I've gotten quite a bit of exposure to Wittgenstein. His early works on the foundations of logic were somewhat beyond me but I was definitely influenced by Philosophical investigations and I am definitely a philosophy of language guy. Greatest philosopher of the 20th century? That's possible but he doesn't have much competition.

Hegel is not generally discussed seriously in the United States. I don't know much about him other than that he was an idealist (for those unaware in philosophy that means something different-the proposition that matter is an illusion and only ideas are really real). I don't put much stock in idealism. I definitely believe in material reality.

I call myself a race realist. I've graded enough papers and taught enough students to know that race is biologically real and goes more than skin deep. I'm pretty sure if you gave me random writing samples I could guess race and sex with pretty good accuracy.

When I started grad school I was merely commie aware but eventually I made the leap to jew awareness. I've been reading VNN for a while. I'm interested in things like demographic trends and evolving social conditions and the VNN news section usually gets the really important articles posted there very quickly so it is a nice one stop shop for that kind of news.

I'm following the financial situation in this country very seriously and I'm rooting for a dollar collapse one way or the other and balkanization of America into ethnostates after that. I'm somewhat optimistic for this to happen.
 
Old August 23rd, 2010 #34
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Are you non American?

The vast majority of American philosophy programs are all analytic philosophy all the time so I've gotten quite a bit of exposure to Wittgenstein. His early works on the foundations of logic were somewhat beyond me but I was definitely influenced by Philosophical investigations and I am definitely a philosophy of language guy. Greatest philosopher of the 20th century? That's possible but he doesn't have much competition.

Hegel is not generally discussed seriously in the United States. I don't know much about him other than that he was an idealist (for those unaware in philosophy that means something different-the proposition that matter is an illusion and only ideas are really real). I don't put much stock in idealism. I definitely believe in material reality.

I call myself a race realist. I've graded enough papers and taught enough students to know that race is biologically real and goes more than skin deep. I'm pretty sure if you gave me random writing samples I could guess race and sex with pretty good accuracy.

When I started grad school I was merely commie aware but eventually I made the leap to jew awareness. I've been reading VNN for a while. I'm interested in things like demographic trends and evolving social conditions and the VNN news section usually gets the really important articles posted there very quickly so it is a nice one stop shop for that kind of news.

I'm following the financial situation in this country very seriously and I'm rooting for a dollar collapse one way or the other and balkanization of America into ethnostates after that. I'm somewhat optimistic for this to happen.
I live in new delhi. I have read some philosophy but I'm not a philosopher. I found VNN when I was searching Ku Klux Klan on google. There was no VNN forum then. I love White people and everything that is associated with White people.
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Old August 23rd, 2010 #35
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There are not many of us left. I might quite literally be one of the last young straight white male academics to ever get hired in this country. Affirmative action in PhD programs is out of control compared to even 10 years ago.
There is a desperate need in this country for a White Nationalist college which completely break away from the entire Jewish mindset and teaches everything from a fundamentally different point of view. I don't know how many times I've heard people say, "They teach you bullshit in college." This viewpoint is common because the Jews have usurped academia in this country and use it to promote their viewpoints which advance their group-collective interests at the expense of Whites. For hard science, they can't inject their agenda into it, but for the others, that's the rule.

A White Nationalist college would teach social Darwinism, non-Freudian psychology and history from a white perspective.

We can dream, right?
 
Old August 23rd, 2010 #36
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There are not many of us left. I might quite literally be one of the last young straight white male academics to ever get hired in this country. Affirmative action in PhD programs is out of control compared to even 10 years ago.
Some of my classmates went to the US for PhD's. I thought about it but dropped the idea. To tell you the truth, I was scared that I'd see rampant race-mixing if I came to the US. I like it here in india because I'm not forced to witness the spectre of miscegenation, and I have a comfortable lifestyle here. We too have our own brand of Affirmative action which we call the Quota system. The lower castes and other minorities are the beneficiaries.
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Old August 23rd, 2010 #37
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In inductive logic the exception to the rule does not invalidate the rule.

What they are doing is a straw man, the intentional misrepresentation of your argument. Nobody ever said all blacks are criminals. Not all lions are man eaters either but do you want them to run wild in your neighborhood?
It seems most people have been trained to believe that one exception DOES invalidate the rule.

Thanks for the elucidation of deduction vs induction. It seems to me that as commonly used people, including me, mean induction when they use deduction. When you think of Sherlock Holmes deducing something, he is going from the facts to the theory, not from the theory to the facts. Our theories about things racial come from the evidence, we don't start with a theory and then try to justify it, in most cases. But no one ever uses the word induce, they only use the word deduce. I'm confused by this.
 
Old August 23rd, 2010 #38
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There is a desperate need in this country for a White Nationalist college which completely break away from the entire Jewish mindset and teaches everything from a fundamentally different point of view. I don't know how many times I've heard people say, "They teach you bullshit in college." This viewpoint is common because the Jews have usurped academia in this country and use it to promote their viewpoints which advance their group-collective interests at the expense of Whites. For hard science, they can't inject their agenda into it, but for the others, that's the rule.

A White Nationalist college would teach social Darwinism, non-Freudian psychology and history from a white perspective.

We can dream, right?
Yeah it'd be great, good luck getting it accredited though. Believe me I know. I've sat in on meetings with marxist jews. You have no idea.
 
Old August 23rd, 2010 #39
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It seems most people have been trained to believe that one exception DOES invalidate the rule.

Thanks for the elucidation of deduction vs induction. It seems to me that as commonly used people, including me, mean induction when they use deduction. When you think of Sherlock Holmes deducing something, he is going from the facts to the theory, not from the theory to the facts. Our theories about things racial come from the evidence, we don't start with a theory and then try to justify it, in most cases. But no one ever uses the word induce, they only use the word deduce. I'm confused by this.
Yes many people misuse the terminology. One of the worst things the jews did to our universities was that they suppressed logic in most disciplines. Taking logic courses used to be pretty standard now only philosophy majors take them. There is a lot of popular ignorance about logic these days.

The main and most important difference is induction is based on probability and theoretically if you have the facts and deduce correctly you are certain to be right.

When you think of induction think of science. The scientific method is essentially induction. You are trying to form general theories to explain specific experimental evidence.

When you think of deduction think of math. You have precise variables and you apply certain rules that always give you the same result.

For example suppose I know two things to be true

1. All men have penises
2. John is a man

We write that in symbolic logic like this

(Ax)Mx->(Ax)Px
Mj

Then there is a law of reasoning that says if you can establish the first part of an implicative relationship then the second part must be true. So if know that John is a man and all men have penises then John must have a penis. This is an operation no different from a mathematical function.

So given

(Ax)Mx->(Ax)Px
Mj

We apply the operation and we get

Mj->Pj

Every single time.

That is deduction. It is math. How many arguments have you ever seen work like that? Not many I wager. Here is a list of these rules

List_of_rules_of_inference List_of_rules_of_inference

It is in symbolic logic so it is hard to understand for people not familiar with what the symbols mean. The operation I used was modus ponens, also called implication or conditional elimination. For 99% of situations deductive logic has no relevance.
 
Old August 23rd, 2010 #40
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But Prof. Pace, what about David Hume's critique of induction? He categorically rejects it.
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