DISTINGUO

The Latin term distinguo,  is the first-person singular present indicative of the Latin verb distinguere, which means “to separate; to distinguish”. By extension, distinguo can also mean « to make a subtle, hence sophistical distinction. »
Distinguo is a an argumentative technique used to clarify the meaning of a term. In an argumentative situation, distinguo is used to prevent misinterpretation and objection by opponents.
The term  distinguo is also used as a synonym for paradiastole, see orientation reversal.

1. Distinguo as an Analytical Tool

In contemporary usage, to make a distinguo is to make a distinction between the different meanings covered by  a complex or ambiguous notion

(1) The system of ‘territorial development’ is based on the interaction between its two components: the local economic system and the so-called ‘territorial’ system.
The distinguo between these two systems stems from the opposing logics underlying them. The economic system obeys principles that are recognized and explained in economics. The territorial system, for its part, encompasses all human, social, economic and urban functions of a place.
Loinger & J.-C. Nemery, [Recomposition and Development of Territories], 1998.[1]

2. Distinguo as a First Step to Refuting an Argument

A distinguo is an instrument used to reduce ambiguity, it conveys the caveat, “Be careful not to mix everything up!”. A distinguo is justified when based on distinctions that are socially recognized and independently established in a dictionary or an encyclopedia.
For example, it can be used to detect a four-term paralogism , or a shift in the meaning of a term in a reasoning, such as eliminate the confusion created by using the word metal to refer to a chemically simple body and to an alloy.

A distinguo can be used to correct an opponent’s discourse,  for example to reestablish a blurred distinction (Mackenzie 1988). Making a distinguo is saying, “I see some truth and some errors in your speech, and I’m going to clarify the situation.”
Consider the following theological syllogism (after Chenique, 1975, p. 9):

(1) Every man is a sinner.
(2) No sinner will enter heaven.
(3) No man will enter heaven.

The opponent says:

• • I agree with premise (1), “every man is a sinner. »
  • In premise (2), “No sinner shall enter Heaven”, distinguo, I distinguish two different statements:

(2a) “(No sinner) as a sinner shall enter Heaven”, I agree: “No man in a state of sin will enter Heaven.”
(2b) “(No sinner) as a forgiven sinner shall enter Heaven”: I deny this proposition.
The distinguo does not relate to the meaning of the word sinner, but rather to two categories of sinners.

• • Therefore, I reject your conclusion.

The opponent objects that the syllogism is fallacious, because the minor is true in one sense, and false in the other.
This is not a case of a four-terms syllogism that is fallacious by homonymy, see paralogism. Sinner is not ambiguous by homonymy, but because, it can be construed in two different ways in a theological context.

The distinguo is a figure traditionally dismissed as being “scholastic”, and used to draw spurious oppositions. Thomas Diafoirus courts Angélique, who hates him.

Angélique: — But the greatest mark of love is to submit to the will of the one you love.
Thomas Diafoirus: — Distinguo, madam. I concede [concedo] In what does not have to do with possessing her, concedo; but in what does have to do with it, I negate [nego].
Molière, [The Imaginary Invalid], [1673][2]

Thomas Diafoirus is pedantic and brutal. He claims his right to possess Angélique, against her will. Apart from this, however, he is ready to submit to her will. The distinction is equivalent to « I agree except when I disagree.”
A distinguo prevents or rectifies ambiguities, but when it introduces distinctions into a perfectly clear expression, it can itself cause confusion itself.

In these cases, the distinguo may or may not be accepted depending on the value of the distinction made. In the case of the sinner, the distinction might be justified by the parallel case of the criminal. A criminal who has served his sentence cannot be called a criminal without qualification, one cannot say, “He is a criminal, let’s call the police!”. A distinction is clearly necessary.
However, in the case of Angélique, the distinction is arbitrary and ad hoc. It can be countered with a third round of speech such as, « Stop it now! Enough with your scholastic distinguos!« , « Stop quibbling please, you are obnoxious! »

3. Distinguo and Dissociation

According to Perelman, the dissociation technique is, “hardly mentioned by traditional rhetoric, for it is especially important for the analysis of systematic philosophical thought as systematic.” (1977, p. 139). For example Kant believed that natural sciences postulate a universal determinism while morality postulates the liberty of the individual. Thus, the term reality, a confused notion, is  dissociated, into a phenomenal reality, where determinism reigns, and a noumenal reality where individuals can freely choose and act on their decision.
According to Kant (not to Marx) these two types of reality are in a complementary oppositional. relationship.

Rhetorical distinguo nullifies one of the opposed domains, which is not the case of dissociation.

Ancient rhetoric has the concept of distinguo. The distinguo is an operation of clarification carried out on a concept considered as possibly « confusing ». To clarify the concept, the distinguo performs a kind of content analysis to rearrange the semantic and cognitive contents of the word in different subdomains, for example to clearly define the position of the subject of an investigation, as in example (1), (§1 supra)
Such an operation is the basic task of the lexicographer when she decides whether the signifier to be defined has only one meaning, or several related meanings (polysemy), or several unrelated meanings (homonymy). At this point, the operation does not involve any special treatment or evaluation of the relatively independent semantic or cognitive subdomains.
Dissociation goes one steps further by deciding that one of these components is to be evaluated positively, the other negatively and considered negligible for the discussion of the other component.

[1] Loinger G. & Nemery J.-C.. Recomposition et Développement des Territoires, Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998. P. 126.
[2] Molière, Le Malade imaginaire [1673], act II, scene 6. Quoted after Ch. Franks, D. Lettau, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/9070/9070-h/9070-h.htm (11-08-2017)

AD BACULUM ►THREAT – PROMISE

AD CONSEQUENTIAM Arg.

The Latin term consequentia refers to [1]:

1. 1. What follows, in space or time, with or without a causal link.
   2. The logical consequence: per consequentias means “it follows that” (Gaffiot, Consequentia) [2]

In the first sense, an argument ad consequentiam refers to something that happened temporally after a referential event, in order to suggest a causal link between the factual consequentia and the referential event.
For example, a large sum of money was stolen from Paul. The investigator notes that after the date of the robbery, James, a friend of Paul’s, began spending large sums of money, despite no change in his income. The investigator uses an argument based on « what happened after (the theft) » to suspect James of the crime, see circumstances.

In the second sense, an argument ad consequentiam is an argument based on causal or logico-semantic consequences. With this meaning, the label ad consequentiam covers all appeals to consequences, whether positive or negative, based on an effect-to-cause relation:
— The pragmatic argument appealing to positive consequences is an ad consequentiam argument.
— In the same way, appeals to absurdity are a form of refutative appeal to consequences that are considered absurd:
a) From a logical point of view they lead to a contradiction.
b) From a psychological or moral point of view they are undesirable.
c) They are contrary to the pragmatic interests and values of the speaker. ;

The ad consequentiam argument is currently used to hypothesize the existence of a causal link between two existing facts, see causality; effect-to-cause.

The following is an example of a wishful thinking: « God must exist because if he does not, then many people are praying for nothing!« . This pathetic argument deduces the necessity of something from the fact that its nonexistence would have annoying consequences for some.

[1] Walton (1999) traces  the “Historical Origins of Argument Ad Consequentiam”.
[2] « Again, [the Stoics] hold that the universe is governed by divine will; it is a city or state of which both men and gods are members, and each one of us is a part of this universe; from which it is a natural consequence that [= ex quo natura consequi ut] we should prefer the common advantage to our own. »   
Cicero, De Finibus, Bk 3) https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cicero/de_Finibus/home.html

[2] Wikipedia, Argumentum ad consequentiam (in French) 

YOU TOO!

Latin “tu quoque!« ; tu « you », quoque « too ».

In both Latin and in English, the « you too! » argument scheme is named after the statement that typically realizes the argument.

S1: Why do you do (action) A?
S2: I do A because my friend X is does it too.

S2 explains and justifies his action. In the general case the answer « S2: – I do A because X does it, he showed me » is a strategy of legitimation by imitation. The fact that X does A creates a precedent that legitimizes doing A. If S1 considers X as a model, it gives A a second form of legitimation. Such legitimations are at the origin of “you too!” argumentation.

When S2 blames S1 for an action, S1 can respond in several ways.

(1) First, S1 can respond to S2 « Everyone does it! ». Since Landru (a popular French serial killer) murdered his lovers, why can’t I?
The degree of legitimacy depends on the seriousness of the transgression and the number of transgressors. If I run a red light in the open country, when there is no traffic and the view is perfect, I feel justified in saying, “Well, it is forbidden, but everyone does it, the guy in front of me went through, I just followed him.

S2 can respond that “a bad behavior doesn’t become legitimate because it’s widespread”; many wrongs never make a right. The common transgression (argument from numbers) never creates legitimacy against the law, see consensus.

(2) In the case where the perpetrator is not another third party but S2, S1 has two options:

– As in the previous case, S1 can quietly legitimize his action by the (bad) example of S2: “But you do it too! You do the same thing!

– S1 can also expand his answer with a counter-accusation, that tries to show S2 the contradiction between what he preaches and what he does, see ad hominem.

– S1 may admit his wrongdoing, but feels that S2 is not in a position to teach him a lesson because of his own wrongdoing. In terms of stasis, the defendant does not recognize the legitimacy of the judge.
S1: – It suits you well to blame me! Please, not you! I have no moral lessons to learn from you!

“Two wrongs don’t make a right”

The phrase « two wrongs don’t make a right » can be understood in two different ways.

– First, as in (1) above « everybody does it, so we have the right to do it »

– Second, as “one does not fight evil with evil”, i.e., “evil must be fought by legal means”, a very important principle; even if many would be tempted to add the clause « as far as possible ».
In other words, the good end – the fight against evil – should not be pursued by evil means; such as torturing the former torturer to stop the torture. This would be a case of autophagy.
By extension, a mistreatment inflicted on someone cannot be justified by arguing, in a kind of anticipatory law of retribution, that, « if he had been in my place, he would have done this to me”, see reciprocity (after Fallacy Files, Two Wrongs) [1]

In practical life, sometimes, thanks to a small miracle, one mistake compensates for another to produce a happy result. that is, This  also seems to happen in science:

Kepler knows that Tycho Brahe [obtained] the best possible accuracy in measuring of the positions of the planets (including the planet Mars), and this accuracy was of two minutes of degree.
With the mathematical model of a circular orbit of the planet Mars that he (Kepler) used, Kepler found discrepancies of eight minutes of degree between the positions observed by Tycho Brahe and the calculated positions.
Trusting the accuracy of Tycho Brahe’s measurements, Kepler abandoned the circular orbit of Mars. He revised the Earth’s orbit and, thanks to two compensating errors, discovered his law: “In the motion of a planet, the vector ray passes over equal areas in equal times ».
Edgar Soulié, Johannes Kepler [1]

[1] https://www.fallacyfiles.org/twowrong.html
[2] Edgar Soulié, Johannes Kepler (1571-1630). Johannes Kepler, the astronomer who discovered the laws of planetary motion [L’astronome qui a découvert la loi du mouvement des planètes]. No date. http://www.astrosurf.com/rtaa/rtaa2016/documents/kepler-edgar-soulie.pdf (01-09-2017).

Argument from WASTE

1. The Scheme

The argument from waste is defined by Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca as follows:

The argument from waste consists in saying that, since one has already begun a task and made sacrifices, that would be wasted if the enterprise were abandoned, one should continue in the same direction. This is the justification given by the banker who continues to lend to his insolvent debtor in the hope of getting him back on his feet in the long run. This is one of the reasons that, according to St. Theresa, leads a person to pray, even in a time of « dryness ». One would give up, she says, if it were not for the fact that

‘… one remembers that one is giving joy and pleasure to the Lord of the garden, that one is careful not to throw away all the service one has rendered, and that one remembers the benefit one hopes to gain from the great effort of frequently dipping the bucket often into the well and drawing it up empty’. (1958], p. 279)

Following the tradition established by Aristotle in the Rhetoric, the Treatise introduces the scheme of waste with a definition immediately followed by two illustrations. The defining topos is given in the following passage:

Since one has already begun a task and made sacrifices, that would be wasted if the undertaking were abandoned, one should continue in the same direction.

The topos is given as a generic sentence, outlining a typified situation. The agents are impersonal (“one”); “(one has) already begun” / “should continue”; “a task”, an “enterprise”; “(one has made) sacrifices ».

The topos corresponds to the following script (the elements of the affective scenario are underlined):

(i) A complex initial situation:

(a) A task has been undertaken in the hope of a significant benefit.
(b) The task is long and difficult: sacrifices have been made.
(c) Nothing has been achieved (implicit).

(ii) These difficult conditions lead to a question:

(d) Implicit: Despair is looming; it is possible and one is tempted to stop: “Should I continue?” This key point is not explicitly mentioned in the scheme.
(e) The situation is now radicalized, because there is a risk of losing everything:

— Either (e1) I “give up” and all the efforts is wasted.
— Or (e2), I continue, “hoping” that things will eventually get better.

This key element, hope, is not mentioned in the scheme, it only appears in the first example.

(e2) can be derived from (e1) by applying the opposite scheme:

 giving up and losing everything
continuing and not losing, or even to  (implicitly) winning.

(iii) Conclusion: A decision, actually a bet: “one should continue in the same direction”.

All these conditions are crucial, e.g. (e). If it were a cumulative task (like weight training), then one could justify the decision to stop by saying that, well, “it’s something anyway”.

The scheme is structured by a concatenation of emotions:

Hope → Temptation of Despair → Renewed Hope

2. Related Forms

The scheme of waste is related to the proverbial “you don’t stop in the middle of the river”, to which one can reply “either you stop or you drown yourself”. It is vulnerable to a counter-discourse such as, “we have already lost enough time this way.

Slippery Slope

The scheme of waste ratifies the slippery slope argument, “we must not start, because, if we start, we will not be able to stop.” The latter scheme justifies an initial abstention, whereas the argument of waste is that of perseverance in action, see direction.

Sunk Cost Fallacy

The sunk cost argument is discussed in Walton 2002, Walton & al. 2008, pp. 326-327. Economic theory distinguishes between sunk costs (retrospective costs), which have already been incurred and are therefore irrecoverable, and future costs. According to this theory, in decision-making, only future costs should be considered in decision making. It follows that considering past costs and sacrifices already made is irrational and fallacious (Wikipedia, Sunk cost).
The banker must know how to evaluate the situation of his debtor at any moment and then, according to this evaluation alone, take his losses, as he knows when and how to take his profits.

3. Examples

The following example introduces a formula often associated with this scheme when it is used to justify the continuation of a war “Then they would have died for nothing!”:

“Withdrawing is tantamount to admitting that all our boys died for nothing!” claims [John McCain ⁽¹⁾ fan] Private Carl Bromberg, upon returning home.
 ⁽¹⁾ Republican presidential candidate in the 2008 United States presidential election.
Marianne, March 1-10, 2008, p. 59.

The key elements of the scheme are scattered throughout the passage (our emphasis):

He [the philosopher Alain] does not believe in war in the name of law. From the end of 1914 on, he favored a peace of compromise, and he followed closely, through the Tribune de Genève ⁽¹⁾ sent to him by the Halévy household, anything that looked like the beginning of a negotiation, however fragile. But he had no illusions: precisely because it is so horrible, so murderous, so blind, so total, war is very difficult to stop. It does not belong to the category of armed conflicts that can be stopped by cynical princes who believe that the costs outweigh the possible gains, and that the game is not worth the candle. It is led by patriots, honest men elected by their people, who are more and more imprisoned every day after the decisions of July 1914⁽²⁾. The suffering has been so great, the deaths so numerous that no one dares to pretend that they were not necessary. And how can we go on without being called traitors? The longer the war continues, the longer it will last. It kills democracy, from which it nevertheless receives what perpetuates its course.
⁽¹⁾ A Swiss newspaper ⁽²⁾ Date of the declaration of war.
François Furet, [The Past of an Illusion], 1995[1].

*

For the method of identifying a topos in a passage, see argument scheme, which uses the argument of waste as an example.

[1] François Furet, Le Passé d’une illusion. Essai sur l’idée communiste au XXe siècle. Paris: Robert Laffont & Calmann-Levy, 1995, p. 65. [The Past of an Illusion. Essay on the Communist Idea in the Twentieth Century].

NORM

The word norm has two main meanings.

1.The average

Satisticians define the norm as the average. Something is « normal » when it is the most frequent.

In France, the average age of first sexual intercourse is 16.8 years. Twenty-seven percent of young people are sexually active before 16. On average, the French have 16.7 partners in their lifetime. Only 10% will be satisfied with the same partner for life. On average, our [French] contemporaries perform 121 somersaults per year. [1

2. The norm as imperative

The stastitical norm refers to what is, whereas the norm as imperative refers to what should be. The latter corresponds to  an injunction, which is expressed by a rule belonging to the particular institution or domain concerned, for example:

Moral and legal domains: Thou shalt not kill.

Ordinary civility: Thou shalt respond when spoken to.

Proper use of language: You shall not say « I is« , you shall say I am

Rational behavior: Do not make ambiguous statements. Your tongue shall not be forked.

Road driving: You must remain in control of your vehicle.

3. Norms in argumentation

The different theories of argumentation have very different relationships with norms. Only some express them as rules.

– Generalized theories of argumentation, such as the theory of argumentation in language or natural logic, have no relation to moral, truthful or rational norms
When the theory of argumentation in language speaks of norms, it refers to linguistic norms, which are expressed in terms of the acceptability or nonacceptability of statements and sequences of statements. The considered rules are linguistic rules. See scale; orientation.

– Argumentative rhetoric defines rhetoric as both a form and a content. As a form, it is the « art of speaking well »; as a content, it is the « art of saying what is morally gooda form, the “art of speaking well”, and as content, the “art of saying what is morally good”.
Speech does not have an autonomous standard. Its norms are externalized as a moral of discourse, combined with an art of speaking that applies the rules of good taste,
These are both diffuse norms, adaptable to the tastes of the time, and difficult to transpose into a set of rules.

– The New Rhetoric takes the quality of the audience that accepts the argument as a norm, S. to persuade, to convince
This norm is not provided by a system of rules but by an ideal instance, the universal audience.

— Classical logic. As a natural form of argumentation, classical logic uses as a norm the laws of thought, first of all the principle of non-contradiction.  The syllogism is evaluated through a system or rules, see syllogistic paralogisms.

— Classical Logic. As a natural form of argumentation, classical logic uses the laws of thought as a norm, primarily the principle of non-contradiction A syllogism is evaluated through a system of rules; see « syllogistic paralogisms. »

— Pragma-dialectics proposes a system of normative rules. See rules; evaluations and evaluators.

— Informal logic uses the method of counter-discourse to test the resistance to refutation of a given argumentation. The norm of a discourse is the discourse of its opponent.

WORDS AS ARGUMENTS

1. A Word as a Hologram of the Argument

Holography is a technique that provides a two-dimensional representation of three-dimensional phenomena. In a metaphorical sense, a word can function as a hologram of an entire argumentation (actually a set of co-oriented speeches) reflecting the totality of the argumentative discourse of which it is a part. The line of discourse is condensed into one of its points, which is the word. Such hologrammatic words are called oriented (in the argumentation within language theory) or biased (in standard fallacy theory).

Argumentations containing oriented words are considered to be fallacious and sophistical because they actually presuppose the conclusions they seem to construct. The conclusion is embedded in the wording of the argument, and the argumentation is caught in a vicious circle. Metaphorically, one may say that the target (the conclusion) is tailored to the size of the arrow (the argument); the arrow cannot miss the target, and is therefore irrelevant.

This is true if an argumentation is seen as a self-sufficient piece of reasoning, contained in an autonomous discursive episode. But if argumentation is seen as an ongoing process, however, the orientation of words testifies to the fact that the argumentative discourse not only constructs its conclusion on the spot, but also recalls that this conclusion was previously established. Oriented words refer to the whole script corresponding to the arguer’s discourse; they are the memory of argumentation, and the clearest example of objects of discourse. The word biased has a negative orientation (“prejudiced; to be avoided »), while the words orientation, oriented can have a neutral-positive orientation (“taking bearings”), while allowing, if necessary, a negative orientation (“biased”).

The global issue is that of the argument orientation and the persuasive definition. In the first case we are dealing with linguistic data, in the second with linguistic activity, in the first case the discourse is biased per se, in the second case it is biased by the speaker.

2. Names as Issues

Consider the pro-life vs. pro-choice debate. If one participant speaks of babies and the other of fetuses, we already know that the former is most likely pro-life and the latter pro-choice. The antagonistic words are “loaded” with the antagonistic conclusions to which they are directed. Baby refers to a human person, and implies that we must feel for this being all the value-laden emotions we feel for small children, and treat it accordingly. Fetus puts these attitudes in parentheses, and technically refers to the « product of the vertebrate conception during prenatal development, after the embryonic stage, when it begins to form and exhibit the distinctive characteristics of the species. (TLFi, Fetus). A word may be value-laden in one discourse and not in another. For example, in the developmental discourse of medicine, fetus contrasts with embryo and is an uncontroversial technical term, as is baby when referring to an infant.
The idea of human selection is generally repugnant. The search for a positive term for babies who have been genetically selected in order to treat their sick brother or sister, continues. Candidate terms include, designer baby, medicine baby, savior baby, doctor baby…

A similar debate is also reflected in the naming of products used to treat crops, products suspected of being carcinogenic. The terms agro-pharmaceutical product or phyto-sanitary product sound very chemical, and the latter has even been appropriated by a French association “Phyto-Victims”. Pesticide also has a negative orientation, despite its etymological meaning of “pest killer” (as if the negation of a negation were interpreted as a hyper-negation). The terminological battle continues, and the industry has turned to plant protection product and crop protection product.

The orientation of ordinary words strongly distinguishes natural language from logical languages. Biased language can be seen as an obstacle to the objective treatment of the issue, and has thus been banned from argumentative discourse as an instrument of monological rationality. The problem is how to agree on the purification principle, since it could significantly affect most of our common vocabulary.

Categorization operations are not too problematic for plants, animals and other natural species. Things are more complicated when it comes to beings and situations whose names cannot be agreed upon before the debate, but which are in fact the product of the debate.
In the abortion debate for example, the discussion of the correct term, fetus or baby, cannot be separated from the discussion of the merits and demerits of abortion itself.

In practice, the persuadee must agree not only to a position, but also to its expression, see persuasion. It is not possible to remedy biased language by conventionalism, which consists in agreeing on the meaning of the words before the debate in which they are to be used, refraining from using loaded terms, or creating neutral terms. The discussion of the nature of the object is inseparable from the discussion of its name. The fact of being at the center of a debate leads to the doubling of the object’s name. Its objective designation and its “real name” are attributed to it at the end of the debate; objectivity is not a condition but a product of the debate.

The search for « neutral » terms reveals, on the one hand, the desire to put ordinary language in brackets when serious questions are involved, insofar as it does not correspond to a purely referential and inferential ideal, and, on the other hand, the desire to consider that the debate between rational beings consists only in clarifying semantic misunderstandings, that are the consequence of the defects of natural language. The task of argumentation would be relatively easy if we could assume that some data are accepted as such by both parties; this is true only for peaceful neutral facts, outside the heart of the debate. In the other case, the division of discourses is openly revealed by the use of so-called biased, loaded or oriented labels. The labeling is already argumentative, see schematization. Agreement on the labeling of facts is a matter of identity, focus, emotional empathy. As there is a conversion to new beliefs, there is a conversion to new facts and words.

1. The mistake about camels in the Koran is traditional and I probably borrowed it from Borges:

A few days ago, I discovered a curious confirmation of the way in which what is truly native can and often does dispense with local color; I found this confirmation in Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon observes that in the Arab book par excellence, the Koran, there are no camels; I believe that if there ever were any doubt as to the authenticity of the Koran, this lack of camels would suffice to prove that it is Arab. It was written by Mohammed, and Mohammed, as an Arab, had no reason to know that camels were particularly Arab; they were, for him, a part of reality, and he had no reason to single them out, while the first thing a forger, a tourist, or an Arab nationalist would do is bring on the camels, whole caravans of camels on every page; but Mohammed, as an Arab, was unconcerned; he knew he could be Arab without camels. I believe that we Argentines can be like Mohammed; we can believe in the possibility of being Argentine without abounding in local color.

Jorge Luis Borges, The Argentine Writer and Tradition (1951) (my emphasis)
Quoted from https://arabist.net/blog/2006/6/30/borges.html (10-29-2021

Borges is a writer, not a historian. Borges’ Gibbon is a “fiction”, which should not be mistaken for the historical Gibbon.

As the context makes clear,Borges uses the case of camels and the Koran as a resource domain for an analogy about the local color and the Argentine literature, an Argentina without gauchos is paralleled with a Koran without camels (certainly in relation with the Florida – Boedo antagonism)

2. Gibbon, Gagnier and the milk of the camel

Edward Gibbon never said that there was no camel in the Qur’an. Speaking about the life of the Arabs at the time of Mohammed, he praises the camel:

Alive or dead, almost every part of the camel is serviceable to man: her milk is plentiful and nutritious; the young and tender flesh has the taste of veal (¹³)

Footnote 13 […] Mahomet himself, who was fond of milk, prefers the cow and does not even mention the camel. But the diet of Mecca and Medina was already more luxurious (Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii, p. 404).

Edward Gibbon The History of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, … Vol. IX, New York, Fred de Fau, 1907.

Speaking of Muhammad’s diet, Gagnier actually says,

« milk was the prophet’s most favorite element » (p. 401).

Later, he quotes Muhammad saying:

« Cow’s milk nourishes & sustains the body (…) It is the most commendable of all milks, & it surpasses by its good qualities the milk of Sheep & the milk of Goat, especially by its delicacy and unctuousness » (p. 404).

Jean Gagnier, La vie de Mahomet… [The life of Mahomet…] Amsterdam, Wetstein & Smith. 1748.

This is a hierachization of the milks, topped by goat’s miks, followed by sheep’s milk, followed down by cow’s milk, etc.

The fact that came’s milk is not mentionned is not silence, but a relevant omission, by application of relevance rule, as shown by the possibility to add an etc to capp-off Gagnier’s enumeration.

3 A misreading of Gibbon’s text? A tentative reconstruction

A quick reader goes over the trivial « accessory » (between brackets):

Mahomet himself, [who was fond of milk], prefers the cow and] does not even mention the camel

but on the “essential” beginning and end of the sentence:

Mahomet does not even mention the camel.

This could be seen as a case of omission of relevant circumstances (S. Accident), resulting in a misconstruction of the reference chain and of the topic of the passage.

Finally, since, basically, Muhammad is the Koran, the conclusion is that:

Gibbon says that the Koran does not mention the camel.

QED.

VERBIAGE

The Port-Royal Logic stigmatizes the technique of the inventio as stimulating the « pernicious fertility of common thoughts » (Arnauld and Nicole [1662], p. 235). The same criticism applies to the techniques of elocutio, which stimulate and exalt the abundance of words (copia verborum). and is the fundamental component of eloquence, producing a verbose and redundant discourse, see ornament:

Among the causes which lead us into error, by a false luster, which prevents our recognizing it, we may justly reckon a certain grand and pompous eloquence. […] For it is wonderful how sweetly a false reasoning flows in at the close of a period which well fits the ear, or of a figure which surprises us by its novelty, and in the contemplation of which we are delighted. (Id., p. 279)

The condemnation of the techniques that stimulate the abundance of ideas as well as the abundance of words amounts to a general condemnation of rhetoric, as inherently fallacious. The rejection of eloquence, renamed verbiage to stigmatize its negative orientation, is a turning point in the relations between rhetoric and logic as a critique of discourse. This fallacy of verbiage is, as it were, the mother of all fallacies. According to Whately:

a very long discussion is one of the most effective masks of the fallacies; […] a fallacy, which, asserted without a veil […] would not deceive a child, can deceive half the world if it is diluted in a large quarto (Elements of Logic 1844) (quoted by Mackie, 1967, p. 179).

See fallacies 4: A Moral and Anthropological Perspective

VICIOUS CIRCLE – BEGGING THE QUESTION
PETITIO PRINCIPII

1. The Terms

Vicious circle, begging the question
The two expressions are equivalent. The expression vicious circle emphasizes the cognitive and textual, semantic aspects of the phenomenon, while begging the question emphasizes the dialectical interactional character of the same concept.
The speaker “begs the question”, that is, asks that what is « in question » (the disputed conclusion itself) be granted, as an argument or principle.

Petitio principii
The Latin expression petitio principii is used as the equivalent of begging the question.
In classical Latin, petitio means “request”, and principium means “beginning” (Gaffiot [1934], Petitio; Principium). A petitio principii is literally a “request” of the “principle”. Tricot considers that the expression “petition of the principle” is “vicious”. He notes that “what we ask to be granted is not a principle but the conclusion to be proved” (Note 2 on Aristotle, Top., VIII, 13, 162a30, p. 359).

2. Vicious Circle

In the Aristotelian system of fallacies, a vicious circle is a fallacy independent of language, see fallacies-2. It is a process of reasoning that attempts to prove a conclusion, by using that conclusion as an argument for the conclusion itself. Hence the image of the circle. Its logical schematic form is:

A, since, so, because… A.

There are different ways « to beg a question » (Aristotle, Top., VIII, 13).

2.1 Repetition

In ordinary discourse, the compound statements « A because A » can be regarded as begging the question from a logical point of view:

S1 — Mom, why do I have I to make my bed every morning?
S2 — You have to because you have to. It is so because it is not otherwise.

But despite its format, this is not a vicious circle. The answer is not an invalid justification but a rejection of any justification, as evidenced by the associated mood, despair or exasperation.

2.2 Reformulation

In many cases, there is a vicious circle because the conclusion is a reformulation of the argument:

I like milk because it’s good.

Fortunately, I like milk, because if I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t drink it, and that would be a shame because it’s so good.

When the very result to be demonstrated is postulated, « this is easily detected when put in so many words; but 
it is more apt to escape detection in the case of different terms,
or of a term and an expression, that mean the same thing” (Aristotle, Top., VIII, 13).

In the theory of argumentation within language, the concept of orientation introduces a bias which is not so different from mere petitio principii. The statement

Peter is smart, he will solve the problem.

The predicate “can solve problems” is a defining feature of “is smart”. The misleading inference is actually a reformulation.
Nevertheless, reformulations are interesting in that they are never strictly synonymous with their basis. They introduce a semantic shift that can be productive. Begging the question is deceptive only in so far as it is strictly the same term that is repeated, see orientation.

Goethe claims that, in any argumentation, the argument is only a variation of the conclusion; from this, it follows that argumentative rationality is simply vain rationalization:

§50 It is always better for us to say straight out what we think without wanting to prove much; for all the proofs we put forward are really only variations on our own opinions, and people who are otherwise minded listen neither to one nor to the other.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Maxims and Reflections[1].

2.3 Ad Hoc General Laws

 The Topics point out the frequent case in which one assumes in the form of a general law what is in question in a particular case (ibid.):

Politicians are liars / corrupt. So, this politician is a liar / corrupt.

This is a common form of argumentation. The speaker postulates an ad hoc principle, in order to apply it to the case at hand.
Such cases can also be analyzed as  poorly constructed definitions: “being corrupt” is taken to be an essential characteristic of politicians, whereas it is only an accidental characteristic, see definition; accident.

2.4 Mutual Presupposition

Not all vicious circles are reformulations. One objection to the idea of ​​a miracle for example, is that it creates a vicious circle. Miracles are supposed to justify the doctrine, to prove that it is true and holy, but a fact is only recognized as a miracle by the doctrine it is supposed to prove. It is a form of resistance to refutation:

S1₁ — This miraculous fact proves the existence of God.
S2₁ — But only those who believe in the existence of God recognize this fact as a miracle.

S2 might add that S1 does not recognize other equally surprising facts; to which the latter might reply:

S1₂ — These other facts are miracles performed by the devil to deceive people.

2.5 Equal Uncertainty

The term diallel is used by skeptics, with a meaning identical to “vicious circle”:

And the diallel mode occurs when that which ought to make the case for the matter in question requires the support of that very matter. Therefore, being unable to assume either in order to establish the other, we suspend judgment about both. (Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I, 15, 169)

This definition introduces a new concept of the vicious circle, which no longer focuses on a semantic equivalence or an epistemic relation, but on the very definition of argumentation as a technique for reducing the uncertainty of a claim by linking it to a less doubtful statement, the argument, see argumentation-1. Skeptics will therefore try to show that the argument is systematically no more obvious than the conclusion. In this sense, skeptics are the first deconstructionists.

3. Circularity in Explanation

Circularity is welcome in definitions, but not in demonstrations or explanations. An explanation is circular, if the explanans is at least as obscure as the phenomenon it purports to explain.

[1] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Maxims and Reflections. Trans. by E. Stopp. London: Penguin Books, 1998. Quoted after https://issuu.com/bouvard6/docs/goethe_-___maxims_and_reflections__ No pag. Goethe collected these maxims during all his life.

Appeal to the TRUE MEANING OF THE WORD

The appeal to the « true meaning of the word » is made in opposition to discourses that are said to use a false, improper, or superficial meaning of a given word. This appeal produces a stasis of definition (2).
The true meaning of a word can be sought in:

– its etymological meaning
– its morphology
– the meaning of the corresponding word in another language.

1. Argument by Etymology

The label « argument by etymology » corresponds to different kinds of arguments, depending on the meaning given to etymology.

1. Under the heading « argument from etymology », some modern texts discuss phenomena related to related words (Dupleix, 1603).
2. In modern usage, the etymological meaning of a word is the meaning of the oldest historical root identified in the history of the word.

The etymological argument valorizes the meaning of that root by assuming that this ancient meaning is the true and permanent meaning of that word, which has been altered by historical evolution to produce a contemporary perverted and misleading meaning. This etymological meaning is used in arguments that exploit a definition.

Atom comes from / is a Greek word composed of the negative prefix a- and a noun meaning « to cut »; it means « in-divisible ». So, you cannot break the atom.

Democracy comes from / is a Greek word composed of demos “people » and” kratos « rule ». In Syldavia, the people don’t rule, they vote and forget. So, Syldavia is not a democracy.

The appeal to etymology is itself supported by an argument from etymology, since the word etymology is derived from the Greek root ètumos meaning « true ».

Because knowledge of etymology is culturally valued, the argument from etymology gives the speaker a certain ethotic posture of majesty and erudite authority. It serves the strategy of discourse destruction well « You don’t even know the language you claim to speak », see destruction.

2. Argumentation Based on the Structure of the Word, Ex Notatione

Latin notatio, « the act of marking a sign … to designate […] to note », as well as « etymology » (Gaffiot [1934], Notatio).

Cicero in the Topics defines the argument « ex notatione » (Topics, VIII, 35: 78), translated as « argument by etymology ». This translation takes the word etymology in its ancient sense of « true ». The true sense of the word in question is now defined as the meaning reconstructed by the correct analysis of the word (and not as its original historical meaning).

One of the examples of argument discussed by Cicero in this context concerns a conflict over the interpretation of a compound legal term (still in use today), the postliminium (Top., VIII, 36, p. 78). The postliminium is the right of a prisoner returning to his country to regain the property and social position he held before his captivity.

Cicero’s discussion concerns the determination of the correct meaning of the word, on the basis based of its linguistic structure, without any clear allusion to its etymology in the contemporary sense of the term.

A contradictory report (joint report) is a report that reflects the statements of both parties, and not a self-contradictory verbal report, or a report that contradicts another.

The argumentation from the structure of the word thus combines two argumentations:

— The first argumentation establishes the meaning of the compound word on the basis of the meaning of its constituent terms and its morphological structure. This type of argumentation is relevant to all idioms whose meaning depends more or less on the meaning of the terms that compose them. It is based on linguistic knowledge and technique, see definition (1).

— A second argumentation uses the « true » meaning thus established for some legal conclusion, according to the general mechanisms of argumentation by the definition, see definition (3).

The argument from the structure of the word functions as a way of resolving a conflict of interpretation.

3. Argument from the Meaning of the Word in Another Language

One can look for the true meaning of the word in another language, which for various reasons is considered to be closer to the « origin » or the « essence » of things. One such language is Chinese. For example, the word crisis, can be defined as « a time of intense difficulty or danger » (Google, Crisis). When searching for « what crises really are », one can move on to « what the word crisis really, truly, means », and look up the Chinese equivalent of the word. The Chinese word for crisis is a compound of two characters, meaning respectively « danger » and « opportunity ». So, crises are opportunities; and, by an argument based on the Chinese definition, we deduce that:

The opportunistic approach to the crisis then takes on its full meaning: Not to seize the opportunity of a crisis, is to miss an opportunity, perhaps hidden, but within reach. (Stéphane Saint Pol, [Wei Ji, Return to the Roots][1])

The argument assumes that the Chinese language has elaborated and preserved a better concept of crisis, closer to the essence of the thing, and better adapted to the modern world.

[1] www.communication-sensible.com/articles/article0151.php]. (09-20-2013).