Really good post over at Certain Doubts on a particular kind of fallacy that philosophers seem to instinctively fall back onto.
Philosopher X says p is true;
Philosopher Y isn’t convinced that p is
true, but has no direct argument to show that p
is false; so, Y attacks some generalization that
implies p instead.
Now I must be honest and confess I've fallen into that trap before. I also can think of numerous times when people have tried that trick on me. It is often quite annoying, especially if you say you don't believe the generalization posed.
Certain Doubts has a good example of the argument that will probably help illustrate it.
My favorite example of this tendency among philosophers occurs in conversations with my former colleague Michael about where to go to lunch. “Where should we eat?” “I don’t know, how about Shakespeare’s?” “Why do you want to go there?” “No special reason, we just haven’t been there in awhile.” “Do you always want to go to lunch at places where you haven’t been in awhile?”
Now while I acknowledge this is fallacious reasoning, is it fallacious reasons that far different from how induction can be fallacious? I bring this up since the argument at hand appears to be of the class of logic C. S. Peirce termed abduction.
Now of course if you require deductive reasoning or simply reject abduction or induction, this is less of a problem. And of course, Peirce would argue that the general notions arrived at by abduction ought to be tested. But is attacking the reasoning of this sort always invalid?
Perhaps I'm missing something obvious and I ought to prepare to be embarrassed. Yet the more I think of it the less I am convinced this is always a problem. Well, it is a problem in certain kinds of Analytic arguments which attempt to show what is inconsistent. Analytic Philosophers probably aren't willing to engage in the kind of thinking scientists are with respect to truth. (grin)
As a side note, I should add that even mathematics, typically taken to be the ultimate deductive discipline, has been entertaining abduction of late. There are several great essays in New Directions in the Philosophy of Mathematics that directly relate to the above. One of the most interesting papers in the collection is Putnam's famous argument that mathematics is quasi-empirical and so need not be based solely on deductive reasoning. Of course while the line of thinking in "What is Mathematical Truth" is the sort of argument quite acceptable to a physicist, probably not many mathematicians or hard nosed Analytic philosophers will accept it.
Putam's argument uses Euler's theorum that Sum(1/n^2) = Pi^2/6. Now Euler couldn't prove this but could expand out the series to the point that it appeared to converge. Was Euler justified in his belief that the theorem was true? Of course that is more an inductive argument. But the ultimate argument of Putnam and a few others in the collection is that mathematics can or at least ought to proceed more loosely than traditionally taken. i.e. we can find theorems which while not absolutely open to proof, are taken quasi-empirically as true.
Now of course using Putnam to argue for Peirce is a tad unfair. After all Putnam is a modern pragmatist of sorts. However I'm not sure that is reason to simply cast aside his arguments, even if they are somewhat out of the mainstream of American philosophy on the topic.
But then, what do I know? After all, I think pragmatism is basically right.
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