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THE QUANTUM of EXPLANATION

~ Science, logic, and ethics, from a Whiteheadian Pragmatist perspective (go figure)

THE QUANTUM of EXPLANATION

Category Archives: argument

The Qualities of Quantities

20 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by Gary Herstein in argument, Critical Thinking, Inquiry, Logic

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Critical Thinking, Inquiry, Logic

An oddity about philosophers, and especially logicians, is that when they talk about “quantity” they are not talking about numbers, or numerical counts. Rather, they are talking about the ways things can be gathered together (or singled out) using words like “all” or “some.” These ideas are called “quantifiers.” I want to do three things (briefly, as always) here: say a little about the “basic” quantifiers (“all” and “some”), say a little about how they get dropped from common discourse and argument – whether from laziness or deliberate obfuscation – leading to much gratuitous confusion. Finally, I want to say something about quantifiers that typically do not make it onto philosophers’ or logicians’ lists, yet are at least as common in ordinary discourse and argument as the “principal” two are. My purpose here (as always) is not to lead you onto the path of righteous proof making, but simply alert the reader to the importance of these operators so that they might not slip by quite so stealthily in the future.abacus_logo1

The second greatest sin in logic is to allow things to pass implicitly; the greatest sin is to block the road of inquiry, which is one of the things that happens when concepts are allowed to pass implicitly. Allowing things to remain implicit means that vague statements are permitted, by innuendo, to become concrete, thus leading us astray (blocking inquiry) from the directly stated vagueness. Sometimes things really are ambiguous, and they must be allowed to stay that way until real data, rather than jumping at conclusions, enables us to clear up the ambiguity. That, or recognize that the ambiguity is not – or, at least, not yet – cleared. Continue reading →

The Iran Nuclear Agreement vs. Conservative Falsehoods

20 Monday Jul 2015

Posted by Gary Herstein in argument, Iran, Nuclear Deal

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Iran, Nuclear Deal

Kaveh Mousavi (the pseudonym of an atheist ex-Muslim living in Iran) has an excellent piece at patheos.com, “Lies of the Opponents of the Iran Nuclear Deal: Debunked.” Kaveh is justifiably proud of this piece, and asked that it be shared as widely as possible. The histrionics of those opposed to this deal are quite extraordinary, and, frankly despicable. It is also worth remembering that these are (generically) the same people who manufactured the lies that led to the catastrophic Iraq invasion.Slim-pickens_riding-the-bomb_enh-lores 

Because Kaveh did such an excellent job both in documenting his arguments, analyzing the appropriate texts, and then logically reasoning from these data to his conclusions, his article is the sort of thing that I like promoting here at Quantum. Rather than repeating his argument wholesale, I will merely highlight Kaveh’s major themes and then encourage everyone to read Kaveh’s article at the links given above. (For purposes of brevity in what follows, will often refer to the new Iran Nuclear Treaty simply as the “Deal.”) Continue reading →

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“But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is, that it adds to interest.” – Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality

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