colonel@buffalo.CSNET ("Col. G. L. Sicherman") (08/12/86)
> >Out of curiosity I hunted up [Jackson, "What Mary Didn't Know," _J. > >of Philosophy_ 83(1986) 291-295] on the way back from lunch. > >It's aggressive and condescending; any sympathy I might have felt for > >the author's argument was repulsed by his sophomoric writing. I hope it's > >not typical of the writing in philosophy journals. > > I don't quite understand what "aggressive and condescending" or > "sophomoric writing" have to do with philosophical argumentation. > One thing that philosophers try not to do is give ad hominem arguments. > A philosophical arguement stands or falls on its logical merits, not its > rhetoric. That's an automatic reaction, and I think it's unsound. Since we're not in net.philosophy, I'll be brief. Philosophers argue about logic, terminology, and their experience of reality. There isn't really much to argue about where logic is concerned: we all know the principles of formal logic, and we're all writing sincerely about reality, which has no contradictions in itself. What we're really interested in is the nature of our exist- ence; the logic of how we describe it doesn't matter. One reason that Jackson's article irritated me is that he uses formal logic, of the sort "Either A or B, but not A, therefore B." This kind of argument insults the reader's intelligence. Jackson ought to know that nobody is going to question the soundness of such logic, but that all his opponents will question his premises and his definitions. More- over, he appears to regard his premises and definitions as unassailable. I call that stupid philosophizing. Ad-hominem attacks may well help to discover the truth. When the man with jaundice announces that everything is fundamentally yellow, you must attack the man, not the logic. So long as he's got the disease, he's right!