Harris and Trump are calling each other a fascist. But either claim will die the death of a thousand qualifications. So it’s not a claim. It’s what Wittgenstein would call a move in a language game called political rhetoric. Fair… Read More ›
rhetoric
Guest Post: Dissoi Logoi (cf Aristotle), the Devil’s Advocate (Mill), and comments.
Guest Post by Pamela Lindsay. Way, way back in the day — a couple millennia ago — students receiving a classical education would have learned the necessity of Dissoi Logoi to constructing their arguments. That is, they’d throw themselves full… Read More ›
OF VIAGRA AND MIDOL
No socialist believes the state should cover even our discretionary expenses, like dinners out; and no libertarian believes the state shouldn’t provide us with police, the courts, and national defence. But everything other than police and courts and national defence… Read More ›
STUPIDITY DEFINED
Philosophers are in the business of either drawing distinctions or collapsing them. A case of the latter is David Hume’s observation that, all this palaver to the contrary notwithstanding, causation just is correlation. A case of the former is the… Read More ›
COERCION
I argue that if the notion of coercion is given a non-normative interpretation, then it can do no work for us. Of its normative interpretations – any precisification of the term and condemnation of coercion arising from natural law is… Read More ›
A ‘DEFENSE’ OF RACISM
I’m convinced, or at least satisfied, that there’s nothing to be lost, and arguably a great deal to be gained, by naturalizing racism, if naturalized it can be.
Guest Post by Pamela Lindsay: A Crash Course in Rhetoric.
Apropos Paul’s post Of Decolonisation and Marranos , re: the perlocutionary force of language. The extent to which language controls thought is a hotly debated topic. John McWhorter, for one, argues language doesn’t control thought as much as some believe. … Read More ›
THE OUTCOMES FALLACY
The way to test your argument for validity is what we might call the that’s-like-saying test. You give me your argument, I provide an analogous argument – analogous in the sense of sharing what we call your argument’s argument form… Read More ›
SOME APT COMPARISONS
I tell my students that the only rhetorical overkill, no pun intended, worse than likening some perceived injustice to the Holocaust is likening some perceived villain to Adolf Hitler. But I never allow my advice to apply to me. Accordingly… Read More ›
THE SCRUM
*This post was first published on May 11, 2020 English has one distinct advantage over Italian. The distinction between an assertive and interrogative is embedded in the construction of the sentence. In writing Italians have to rely on the question mark,… Read More ›
Paulosophical Vimplications 