Hey everybody, Marcus here.
Many communities on youTube, such as the anti-feminist community, and the skeptic community, continuously
state their pride as it pertains to their command of logic.
Within MGTOW, we too make such claims.
However, as one listens to content created or reads comments within our and other communities,
we can see that there are few who have had any exposure of formal logic.
This manifests itself in subtle ways.
Failures in logic occur in these communities frequently but go undetected as they tend
to occur within a message that is overall approved of by the audience.
Now, many people have asked me how I go about constructing my arguments.
Well, the simple answer is that I stick closely to formal logic.
However, this does not mean anything to someone who is not familiar with formal logic.
As such, to help those within our community to better equip themselves with reasoning
skills, I will be putting out a 3-video series on the most basic parts of formal logic.
Logic has its own language.
When you understand this language you also come to understand how arguments are constructed,
how arguments gain persuasive power, and most importantly, how to interpret and attack an
argument.
Another very important benefit of understanding even the basics of formal logic is that you
will be able to tell when someone has no idea what they are talking about and be able to
demonstrate the case.
Some of the things you will encounter in this series might surprise you.
So, if you have no previous exposure to formal logic, please do yourself the favor of sitting
through this series.
You will come out as a more competent critical thinker because of it.
The material will all be intuitive when it is clearly explained so you should not be
worried about whether or not you will understand it.
I guarantee you will understand this material because, well, you are a rational being.
The first video in this series, namely, this video, will talk about sentences and propositions.
The second video will deal with arguments.
The third video will deal with the validity and soundness of arguments.
So, let's get started!
When we reason, we use sentences.
The sentence "The hypergamous whore who is in love with Fred offended most of her
beta male orbiters" implies, inter alia, the sentence "Some hypergamous whore offended
most of her beta male orbiters" as well as the sentence "Some hypergomous whore
is in love with Fred."
Someone who accepts the first sentence must also accept the second sentence.
However, not all sentences are suited to enter into inferential relations with other sentences.
Nothing follows from such a sentence as "Hey!" (someone might be greeting another person
in this way, or someone might be calling another, or someone might be explaining to another
how to say the equivalent of 'Ciao!' in English, etc.).
Simply put, the sentence "Hey!" contains too little information to be the basis for
drawing conclusions.
This is why at the very foundation of logic lies the distinction between sentences and
propositions.
Sentences are identified with the grammatically correct sentences of English.
A proposition or sometimes referred to as a statement, on the other hand, is what an
unambiguous declarative sentence asserts.
The same proposition can be asserted using different sentences.
For example, the sentences:
Logic is the most boring subject for a video Marcus has ever chosen.
and
The most boring subject for a video Marcus has ever chosen is logic.
say the same thing – they can both be used to assert the same proposition.
Moreover, the very same proposition is asserted by the following sentences:
Logic is boring.
[in English] La logique est ennuyeux. [in French]
La lógica es aburrida. [in Spanish] Logik ist langweilig. [in German]
Logika jest nudna. [in Polish]
Logicians care about propositions because propositions are the proper bearers of truth-values:
propositions can be true or false.
In classical logic, there are only two truth-values: true and false.
Now, let us see how these two characterizations of propositions; namely, the characteristic
that "A proposition is what is asserted by an unambiguous declarative sentence"
and the characteristic that "A proposition is either true or false" are related to
one another by reflecting on whether non-declarative sentences like exclamations or questions,
and ambiguous declarative sentences can be true or false.
In other words, we will see if sentences that serve as exclamations can be propositions.
Then we will see if questions can be propositions, and finally, we will see if ambiguous sentences
can be propositions.
First, let us look at exclamation sentences.
The first rule of exclamation sentences is that exclamation sentences cannot be propositions.
Exclamations like "Hey!" or "Come here bitch!" are not propositions, since they
are neither true nor false.
In fact, exclamations cannot be used to assert anything at all.
Next, let us look at questions.
Can questions be propositions?
Consider this question: "Are you drunk?"
Is this question true or false?
It is good if you are puzzled since this question, in fact, no question, can be true or false.
What can be true or false is the answer to this question, but not the question itself.
Again, you cannot assert anything with a question.
Now, this has an interesting consequence to it as far as some youTube videos are concerned.
If you listen to a lot of response videos you will most likely hear the speaker using
a very sarcastic tone while asking a series of questions.
Because of the sarcastic tone, the listener is being led into answering the questions
in his mind in a manner implied by the speaker, however, the speaker himself is actually not
explicitly saying the answers to the questions.
The listener may come out of watching a video that did little more than use a sarcastic
tone of voice to ask a bunch of questions and feel like the speaker has made a good
argument.
However, this could not be further from the truth.
The speaker in fact has said nothing at all much less made an argument.
As questions cannot be true or false, they cannot serve as propositions.
If a sentence cannot serve as a proposition, it cannot enter into inferential relations.
If a sentence cannot enter into inferential relations, it cannot serve as a premise of
an argument.
And if a sentence cannot serve as a premise in an argument, you cannot create an argument
out of such sentences.
I have seen 20-minute-long response videos that have literally said nothing.
Sure, a lot of words came out of the speaker's mouth, but the video was itself completely
hollow.
Using questions as a rhetorical device has another side effect to it.
When a speaker ask a question, but uses a tone of voice to insinuate that the listener
should volunteer a certain answer, the speaker cannot be held liable of things like slander,
as he has not actually made an assertion.
For example, look at the question: "Is president Trump having sex with his daughter?
Find out on the news at 11."
This is a backhanded bitch sentence.
It associates Trump with incest without making an assertion of incest.
However, this backhanded sentence could not be considered slander because as we have learned,
questions are not propositions.
But let us move on to ambiguous sentences.
No ambiguous declarative sentences are propositions.
Let's consider the following declarative sentence:
"The Deans did not give the students permission to protest since they were skinheads."
It might look as if whoever is making this statement must be saying something that is
either true or false.
However, the impression is mistaken because this sentence is in fact ambiguous.
It is unclear whether 'they' refers to the Deans or to the students.
The following two sentences demonstrate the two interpretations that can be contained
in the sentence we just read:
(1) The Deans did not give the students permission to protest since the Deans were skinheads.
(2) The Deans did not give the students permission to protest since the students were skinheads.
Now, the two sentences we just read are both valid propositions as neither are ambiguous.
Here is another example of ambiguity in a sentence.
"Susan, the bull dike lesbian, ate the tuna in a bikini."
This sentence is again ambiguous.
It is not clear who was in the bikini – Susan or the tuna.
As such, the following two interpretations can be made.
(1) While Susan, the bull dike lesbian, was wearing a bikini, she ate the tuna.
(2) Susan, the bull dike lesbian, ate the tuna, which was put in a bikini.
So, if you encounter a sentence that can be interpreted in different ways as we have demonstrated,
you can safely conclude that an argument cannot be constructed using such a sentence as such
sentences cannot be propositions.
Now, there is another type of sentence that falls into the family of ambiguous sentences.
These are sentences that use indexicals.
No declarative sentences with indexical expressions are propositions.
There is a class of sentences containing the so-called "indexical" expressions (like
'I', 'he', 'she', 'there', 'now', 'they', ' him', 'her'
etc.) that are notoriously ambiguous because the indexical expressions change their referent
depending on the context in which they are uttered.
Let us take the sentence: "I am in Poland now."
We might think that the sentence is true, but let us consider what is actually asserted
by this sentence.
When I, Marcus, use this sentence, I mean by it:
Marcus is in Poland on February 17th 2017.
which is true.
You may use the sentence too, in which case you would mean by it:
(Insert your name here) is in Poland on (Insert current date here)
in which case the proposition (most likely) is false.
The point is that depending on who utters the sentence "I am in Poland now", and
when, it will stand for a different proposition.
This marks a general difference between sentences and propositions.
In a proposition, the content is explicitly stated whereas non-propositional sentences
often leave some of the content to depend on the context in which the sentences are
uttered.
Non-propositional sentences thus depend on context, whereas propositions are independent
of context.
The meaning of sentence "I am in Poland now" depends on the context in which it
is uttered.
If I, Marcus, utter sentence "I am in Poland now" on February 17th 2017 in Poland, the
meaning of "I am in Poland now" will be the proposition "Marcus is in Poland on
February 17th 2017."
If you utter the same sentence, namely "I am in Poland now" today, its meaning will
be the proposition "(Insert your name here) is in Poland on (Insert current date here)".
But the meaning of the proposition "Marcus is in Poland on February 17th 2017" does
not depend on the context in which it is uttered – it does not matter who, where or when
says "Marcus is in Poland on February 17th 2017", the truth-value of "Marcus is in
Poland on February 17th 2017" will be constant.
If the proposition "Marcus is in Poland on February 17th 2017" is true when uttered
by me on February 17th 2017, it will remain true when uttered by you today.
Finally, the word "statement" is sometimes used interchangeably with the word proposition.
However, since the word "proposition" is fancier and less common in day to day conversation,
I would recommend you use the word "proposition" when talking about logic.
Now, the concept of a proposition is something that can help you a great deal when it comes
to clear communication at work and in your day to day speech.
You need to develop a habit of being explicit in your language.
What I have noticed in my professional life is the havoc and ambiguity that indexicals
bring when communicating with others.
Do your best to avoid indexicals when you wish to communicate anything via text.
When you are composing an email, try to avoid the words "he, she, or they."
Instead, always name the person or group you are referring to.
Do this in each sentence.
Treat each sentence as if you are constructing a proposition.
Never leave room for ambiguity.
This one habit will increase the effectiveness of your communication enormously.
Also, practice this habit when asking a question.
Let us imagine your co-worker says to you: "The boss reviewed the report you submitted
last week.
He wants you call him to talk about it."
This can be an ambiguous sentence as there can be any number of managers who you and
your co-workers report to or engage with.
You could ask your co-worker "Which boss asked to call them?" and this should be
sufficient.
However, I would recommend instead that you get into the habit of asking a closed set
question instead.
Ask your co-worker "Was it Harry, Stephen, or Bill who requested I call them."
The reason you want to do this is because you force your co-worker to answer by giving
one of the names contained in your list.
If you merely ask "Which boss?", your co-worker may respond "The main boss"
which again is ambiguous and forces you to ask yet another question in clarifying of
who exactly of the "main bosses" is the main boss being referred to.
Now, this may seem like a trivial example but consider it already demonstrates the ineffectiveness
of the exchange when ambiguity is introduced.
These small bits of ambiguity may mean little when interacting face to face but when you
send an ambiguous email and get a response 3 days later asking for you to clarify, you
have effectively added an additional few days of waiting between your clarifying email and
the response you originally set out to receive.
Now, when I write my own arguments, I try to be very careful in my sentences.
I do my best to make sure that I am putting forward propositions and not ambiguous sentences.
When I do ask questions in my arguments, as I am prone to do; I ensure that the sentence
following the question is the proposition that answers my question.
If you want to see some of these concepts in action then watch my video on The Wall,
or On Alpha Males, or On Pick-Up-Artists.
The clarity in those videos come, in part, from the meticulous use of propositions.
This is another reason why arguing over words is silly.
English sentences are merely there to help us get across the propositions.
As long as what we say manages to achieve this task, then language has served its purpose.
A reasonable person will never try to fight you on the level of language.
In fact, he will try to help you on the level of language to extract the propositions underneath.
The reasonable person will try to crush you on the propositional level.
Anyways, let us summarize what we have learned in this video.
Firstly, there is a difference between sentences and propositions.
Sentences are the grammatically correct utterances we issue in the English language.
A proposition or sometimes referred to as a statement, on the other hand, is what an
unambiguous declarative sentence asserts.
We also learned that no exclamation like "Hi!" can be a proposition.
We learned that question cannot be propositions.
And finally, we learned that ambiguous sentences, such as sentences with indexicals cannot be
propositions.
In the next video, we will see how propositions are used in constructing an argument.
But for now, thanks for listening.
Go team!
No comments:
Post a Comment