The Fallacy Fallacy

The Fallacy Fallacy

Samuel Bird

Why? The great question of both the causality and the necessity for something. Pick any thought and ask your series of “whys” until you end in the murky depths and only seem to touch the unknowable God’s hands. The impossible is known to be such, but something about what we are seeks to try anyways. Whether in hubris or magnanimity, the mind seeks to wrap itself around the world that it is inside of. How? As the “why” elucidates the reasons, so should a system be used to identify the reasons for all the nameless things we gesture to in confusion. This is reason. What is reason? First, what does reason do? Reason is the deliberate activity of the mind to engage, comprehend, diagnose, and direct it’s being. This what it does, but what is it? Well, we only have access to something based on what it does, so it is effectively solely this. Reason is the mind identifying the reason for why is being, why does it possess these qualities, and how can these facts be manipulated toward our ends. To identify the sufficient reason for being, it has to constantly pull a series of information from the world to the mind. This can be fraught as reality is multifaceted to the extent not all portions of it are sensible and not all sensed facts fit into baskets ready for our grammatical cognition. What is the atomic unit of this conceptual method? The thought. A thought is a mental phenomenon that need no other quality than seemingness to the entity. There are two places we could potentially get a thought. The first is before experience or a priori and the second is after as a posteriori. This is the origination, but what of the method for identifying and working with that thought? For that we have the synthetic as the sensed and the analytic as information to be dealt with in the mind. There was an incredible conversation that occupied the greatest of minds. The question was whether truth was pulled into the mind via experience or started as a thought as was identified. This was the synthetic a posteriori and the analytic a priori. Coming to Hume, he identified that there were few conceptual resources this allowed us, which were only matters of fact, and relations of idea. In other words, instances in the world as a given or else assumed ideas in terms of each other. For this reason and others, he found the limitations of induction as the means of reasoning based on likelihood. The sun will come up everyday until it does not. You are alive until you are dead. This theory is demonstrative of the world’s nature until it is not. He was concerned with this and set knowledge as something limited enough to be concerning. Kant and his methodical mind were alarmed and awoken by this series of thoughts that put all else in suspicion. After much effort and from a book that made my mind weary, he suggests a twisting of Hume’s fork. While we can never have knowledge that is analytic posteriori because you can’t see something before you do, he suggested we can have synthetic a priori as our mental models can capture the world sufficiently that we can have new data that we can then check against the world. Let’s say I show you one rock, then after you close and open your eyes, I show you another. If we can rule out identity as the rocks look different, we can conclude that we have two rocks. We now have access to knowledge from the wonderful mental systems that we built. Here, we come to an issue that puts us back into skepticism. The first, is the classic problem of knowledge. A fact can be true in the world, I can hold a thought in my mind, but it is never necessary that my thought is identical to the fact in every way but location. Something can be true, as in, in the world. It can be believed, as in, in the mind. However, we can never justify the reason between these to be passed judgement and into necessity. As I will talk about in another chapter, I suppose it is because our mental models aren't designed to capture the world, and it is suspect that the world has a simple series of laws it functions by. We can only have content of thought as information AND context for that data’s relationship. To not have context is to give no form to thought. To not have content is to have nothing to think about. Here then is our issue: We need both a system for thought, thought, and reason to believe that is in the world. This is the means that we go about affirming the values that have as will. 

We have talked about the idea of reason generally, now let us explore logic and its specific methods to understand the depths of the problem to identify what else we must resign ourselves to. To identify being’s multifaceted reasons for being so, philosophy as love of wisdom has the great tool of logic. Since Kant, this method has had wonderful advancements that I have enjoyed as one of the only worthy fruits of modernity. What is logic? Logic is the context or form of thought that, assuming the content, can conclude necessary or likely outcomes. Using the means for extracting the atomic facts listed prior, we can now work with them to build more complex methods of reason. There are three sorts of logic. Deductive logic is conclusions coming from premises and context necessarily. Inductive logic is conclusions coming from premises and context probably. Finally, abductive is the best possible explanation as a conclusion given the premises or facts. Let’s now look at the first two ideas in terms of “truth.” If we want the conclusion to reflect a fact in the world that is represented in the mind, it needs to have a form that infers or necessitates the outcome, and the atomic truth value of the premises also needs to be true. To this day, I think of pipes. We both need the context of effective pipes and to have the content of water. We would only with both, then necessarily or likely have water. Otherwise, some water can happen to spray to the correct bucket via the leak, but it would be a coincidence and the mind couldn’t fathom and harness that reason deliberately. For deductive logic, if the premises or content are the case, we would say that is sound or true. If the form or context of the argument that is composed of premises is valid, then combined with the true atomic statements, the conclusion must be true. For induction logic which is based on probability, the form's health is called “strength” and the atomic truth value is called “cogency.” Let us look at a conditional. Let’s say, if I love you, I will work hard to write books to make something valuable for your life. This is one premise. To make our first valid argument, I can say that I do love you and therefore must write, or that I don’t write and therefore do not love you. Each of those forms are deductive, meaning if the statements are true, the conclusion must be true. Let us now look at the titular topic of fallacies. Let’s say that I affirmed the consequence or denied the antecedent, this would be formally fallacious. For example, if I say I write so I must love you, it is possible, and even perhaps likely, but not necessary. Now, let’s say I didn’t love you, would I not write? Perhaps my writing was a punishment similar to what Kant put me through. A fallacy is a quality, a form or context or else a content or premise can have that does not necessitate the outcome. If we are doing deductive reasoning, we can control formal fallacies to not exist in an argument. For this, logical proofs take a series of statements as premises and a conclusion, to then reverse the argument and see if we can solve for the conclusion. The plight of man is to embark and not forget why. We need to recall for what reason we reason. It is not, at least initially, to prove ourselves better at computing thoughts. It is to identify the reason for being and the way it is and potentially ought to be. This is where pretentious “wordmath” or entertaining puzzles are brought back to the task of identifying our lives and their processes. To understand this, let us look at an unfortunately uncharitable endeavor done by some who understand fallacies. As one goes about making sense of being, some barrage others with critiques of logical fallacies either formal in the structure, or else in the content. What these idiots miss is that we operate from a position of desperation, which is true for a host of categories. Even if my mind was better at storing and processing data, it is not true that I have unlimited access to data beyond doubt. In fact, I only have two things that can be, first that the thinking necessitates a thinker and that one is then doing something about it, but even these are contested. How can we identify if we are able to successfully do deductive logic? Whether or not we can come to tautologies that are necessarily true like “if we have me, then we have me,” or contradictions such as “if we have me, we don’t have me.” If we are not able to come to outright contradictions possibly, then the means of thought is not deductive. However, we can never identify that we have A and ~A (not A), because it is suspect if we ever had A in the first place. Let me go back to the beginning. We are at all times taking inductions to identify if a given fact is the case as being in the world and mind. We can then build necessary systems, but the outcomes are still contingent that we have water to put in the pipes. Philosophers can, assuming knowledge, build complex systems of additional knowledge. Give us the materials and we can build you heaven. However, we don’t have a single rock other than supposed. Even if we are deductive in form or context, we are effectively inductive in atomic value or content. For example, if we look at predicate logic, we can see more room for this issue. Let's say that if there is a given person, that given person could talk. However, when we do an existential instantiation and make that general person into a specific person, then we could after the fact choose a mute. The issue is then that we would struggle to identify all categorical contingencies such that we can make statements ready to be made true of one instance or all universals. Perhaps if we are lucky enough to get A and ~A and think we have done a reductio ad absurdum, we equivocate what A is in one instance. Or, let’s say we have A and ~~A (not not A). Are these equivalent? Could something be not not something and still not be the first thing? It demonstrates that it is not necessarily not A, but that would not then make it A, although I have never gotten another philosopher to nod their head to this. What does that leave us with? These “fallacies” as the formal or informal non-necessity of ideas are not too far behind non-fallacious arguments, as they are still inferences. 

We have looked at some formal fallacies that are in the structure of the argument such as affirming the consequent and denying the antecedent. Again, these would then make the conclusion non-necessary. However, much of my work is identifying that non-necessity is not non-contingency and certainly not falsity. A non-necessary entity of faith is not a certain non-entity for faith. These contingencies are possible as conditionals that we can and must only then affirm to obtain. For example, if we have value, we can have valuable existences. However, it is not necessary that we have value. However, it is possible we do. At the bottom of reality is non-necessity and contingency, but our will both is the means and ends of affirming such. We can live for nearly anything though not all align with ourselves and the world, but there must be something that we live for. There are enough philosophers who seek to tear down philosophy. I am not trying to hurt logic, but to not let its strength get in the way of the end it works toward. If I love you, I will write for you. It is not necessarily the case that my lack of writing is a lack of love, but if I failed to write, I would wonder about my love for you. If I don’t love you, which is untrue, I could easily still write. In fact, could we say that these fallacies are more likely the case than not? Is my not writing a stronger inference that I don’t love you than that I do, given the argument? Non-necessity isn’t just not non-possibility, it is still contingent and even likely. Not morally, but causally, it is then incredibly uncharitable to cry “fallacy,” when we have so little data to work with. Yes, the way that we work with the data we have is crucial, but we have so little and that which we have can be taken away. Now, let us look at informal fallacies. One famous one is “tu quoque,” which translates to “you too.” Basically, when you are arguing about something that must be done, you point out that your interlocutor doesn’t do so either. It is fallacious because it is a non-necessity, as they could be right and always have akrasia or failure to act. Non-necessity is not non-contingency, and it is even perhaps possibility. As I have pointed out in these books, I strive to engage with my existence and live Esse Maxim. Why? Because if that mind that held this idea initially didn’t find it worth execution, why should you? If your worldview was so good, would you act like it was true? Yes, one can fail to live up to a perfect system, but they can perfectly engage with it. At least, we would expect that they behave as if it was true. For that reason, there is a reason we use tu quoque and other fallacies. Sometimes out of error, but often out of desperation. If two prophets come to me and I have no other way to know who really spoke to God on the mountain, I would follow the one who lives as if they just spoke with God, all else being equal. Let’s look at the fallacies of composition and division. These are fallacies that revolve around the quality of a part not necessarily being a qualities of the whole, and vice versa. Here is the issue, we sometimes only have access to parts or wholes. I have never met everyone from a given religion, but if enough of them have a quality, all else being equal, I will assume it. You will note that it is not necessarily true, but I don’t have epistemic access to a larger sample than I do. Let’s say we see an island in the distance covered in rocks. I will see the totality of rocks and assume portionality of rocks. You can point out maybe there is an oasis at the center of the island as that part is non-representative of the whole, but based on the whole I can see, it is all rocks and we sail on. Yes, a boat with glass windows is not all glass, but if we only had the glass, it is justified to assume that is effectively all it is. We do not have access to the world as it is, but as we are. For that reason all truth is, is effective facts we can assume. Fallacies then don’t fail us. They succeed in what they seem to do, if that is all we can do. 

Even if we are able to be deductive in form, we are inductive in content. For that reason, all we have is the likely and the most reflective of ourselves and the world. How then does it make sense to deny ourselves and our souls needs when the world’s denial is unknowable? Our definitions will make categories that don’t exist outside of instances with a shared quality, but even then to an arbitrary degree. No system is a closed system unless it is that system of everything. However, what then would that limitless degree of non-exclusion mean anything at all? Why then would I write? It is not to uncover the secret knowledge, but to fulfill the will I am. We don’t exist to know the world but to be in it. I often will use a number of arguments along with their unique values, as a part of a calculus for something being true. If one thing has a number of arguments more than another idea, and the average quality of those arguments is the same, I will pick the one with more arguments. This is foolish if I am a logician, but it is effective if you are a human. Again, non-necessity is not falsity. It isn’t even less likely or even necessarily a tie. If we can have necessity, that is preferable, but when are we that fortunate and have that little desperation. This is why my philosophy seeks to paint pictures instead of exact meaning. We use reason to hint at those reasons for being. This lazy equivocation between necessary, non-necessary, and contingent is what made the modern philosopher not only complicit in the death of the soul done by the scientist, but even baselessly supported it as he relegated himself only to morality and meaningless metaphysics. This sort of philosopher may read this and think the issue is precision. He would then note how predicate logic moves even the qualifiers into the realm of necessity. He will then overstate its accuracy, and then use that logic to feed his will of showing there is no soul to will. I have seen philosophy move from the asking of what one believes to become the means for broadcasting what one believes. This is not too far from what I am proposing as I ask to what end we philosophize, but this same sort will then say their conclusion is necessary. This is what I call ratcheting logic. When one fact proves you wrong, but the opposing fact proves that opposite false. If we want to be on someone’s side, their victimhood is their oppression, but when they victimize, what horrible things did their opponent do to work them up? This is where Hume correctly found that reason is a means for the willing mind to have power to manifest the willed. As I will speak on later, there is no impartiality. No one goes out of their way to share with you what you already knew and believed. They seek to alter your mental model, and if they say they don’t, they are not to be trusted. This sort of philosopher will hope to impress you with the exactness of their form to distract you from the issues with their content. Yes, math is wonderous. However, measuring exact enough for a perfectly accurate outcome is strenuous. However, what we can do is measure well enough. Perhaps as there is quantitative reasoning that is now taking into account the chaos of quantitative variables, there could be a system of reason that did so with qualitative variables, but that is a work for another day. We will ever be limited by the soundness of the ideas that make up an argument. We can then make systems that are exact, assuming soundness, or attempt to make systems that are designed to hold that chaotic soundness and have an outcome with a disclaimer. 

Let us go back to the reason for reason. You have reasoned today with me as you have argued with the ideas we have worked with. What motivated the reasoning that you did? To some, this may seem mute, but I would then ask if the reason for our reasoning would change the way that we do it. If we run for health versus running to leave danger, it changes the speed by which we will go. If reason concludes that the needing soul is not, then the soul that sought to embark on this endeavor would be welcome to not adopt the conclusion. To identify why we reason, let us ask why we asked the first question we did. That first “why?” that we worked with, what motivated that? If we ask which of something is better, our reason for asking it can give us the criteria that make it so. We breathe into a question, a lifetime of context. There are our motives for asking a question, and then there are the assumptions of belief that make that question at hand to ask. If I ask why a religion at hand survived thousands of years longer than another, is it because it had the qualities needed to survive, or by surviving one day longer, it gained those qualities needed for the next day? The property of the asking of the question is something unto itself. Another fallacy is called “complex question” where assumed in the statement is something needed to be substantiated. For example, “why did you steal my books?” This assumes that you stole my book. Here is the issue, all questions are complex questions. Though getting down to properly basic facts, we are not properly basic beings. You can’t break us down into simple categories and manage those qualities. However, we are so ungrounded at this point that living as a human is an affirmation of solely one’s Esse Maxim and not a necessity given the facts. 

Going back to the “ratcheting fallacy,” I get the idea from a tool that when we turn it one way, it moves a shaft that way. However, when we turn it the other way, it clicks and does not turn that shaft that opposite direction. The basic premise is that when someone wants to come to a conclusion, they will count some data in their favor, and then they will count the other data as not not in their favor. My favorite example is hearing people talk about people they love versus hate. The qualities being explained are not that different, rather it is the valuing of those qualities. If we love them, maybe they are quirky, however if we don’t they are a freak. If we love them they are strong, otherwise they are a meathead. If we love them they are funny, if not, they don’t take things seriously. There is a powerful tool here, if you are insulted, note they are likely just pointing out facts and trying to get you assume they are not valuable. “Samuel, you ramble and you are a messy writer.” Yes, I know. However, I am not convinced that leaves my whole plight hopeless. We take data points to demonstrate the thing that we already found something to be demonstrative of. This is fallacious and when there is an alternative, non-fallacious arguments should be used. However, no matter what a philosopher says, all things are not equal. If someone wants to end their life and I don’t mind breaking reason to keep them alive, I will use this fallacy with passion and fervor. If they are hurt at a failure, sometimes fortune is against us. If they have success, look at their abilities. If they had a tragedy, look how beautiful a story it makes. If it is the monotony they hate, life isn’t about just living a good story. Once I have justified a direction, fallacies are a means. In the manipulation of another’s thoughts, I allow it if it meets this criteria: That I have strong reason to believe that on the whole, they would have desired I done so. In the saving someone from violence or suicide, I succeeded in making that case and then in saying whatever incongruent thing needed to make it happen. Trying to catch fallacies misses this. 

No one reads my book. On that list of no ones are my critics. In their resignation, I will do their job for them. I am limited by my imagination in doing so, but I have some guesses. Perhaps they would say that while the content that goes into our forms is an induction, wouldn’t we want to at least have the form itself be deductive? If possible yes, but how hard is it to pull raw thoughts into conditionals and disjuncts? When does reality not match our conceptual grammar and can we allow it to still exist as so? The sort of thought most commonly employed is a sense of something, a value to maximize, and a judgement of the variables at hand to maximize that value. This doesn’t include the impartiality of deduction, but we are not impartial beings. As I will speak on another day, this impartiality is now framed as “bias” which we are taught to be biased against as if a man could step outside of himself and think as someone else. We can adopt other’s values or we can attempt to see the world as a place without valuing inherent, but we would only do so in order to maximize the initial value we found in ourselves. Another critique may be that we can’t throw out our system of reason. Philosophy has had enough lashings done in the last few centuries and I don’t seek to steal away her crown. However, I don’t want the crown to be confused for her majesty. It is wisdom and it’s love that she is emblematic of and her crowning logic is purely the means of knowing that majestic effectiveness. We start to love for what it acquires, but we truly love when we love the giver passed their giving. If logic can’t make tastier food, faster systems, or more resources, would we still love the thoughts that made up our mind? When does that love become intrinsic? Logic is the building that can carry us to lofty heights, but where in the mist does it touch the ground. If we can assume the premises, we can have anything. However, what allows us to assume the premises to reach for the grandeur of the conclusion? There are enough systems, where, if we grant them the primal force, they can give us the world. However, logic is as fraught as science and religion and trying to get you to affirm that first point of departure into the leap of faith, though perhaps it is more properly basic. Philosophy as I love her and Esse Maxim as I share it with you, is the means of that affirmation of facts and values that allows and even desires that the system do its bidding. On will and wisdom found only within you, does that grand structure have its foundation. The idea of the fallacy of fallacies is to see where deduction has its limits. I use intentional fallacies at times as an effective means of providing humor. However, when we live in an unknowable world, as a limitedly sensing being, we have to set off our departure into the black night with nothing but fallacies to press against. Do I have sufficient reason to have God conceptually over not? Are there fraught points in my reasoning? Could a good God look down on this desperation and look on? To the mind that suffers there can be no God, but to the whole soul who suffers there must be a God. Let us drop our act of strutting around the stage as the enlightened ones who took over when the director was in question. We are lost beasts who are at best commiserating and laboring to make this mystery into something as an enigma ourselves. No man knows enough to be past faith. I have dreams where I do logical proofs and they are valid as I check them in the waking hours. However, I am no computational machine. Much more of my dreams are filled with fearing the horrors, lamenting the writhing, and basking in the divine. When man forgets his soul, he will confuse the role it fills, for his mind. 

You and I expend a great deal of energy to reason. That energy expended must bring about energy sufficient to at least allow that thinking to happen again. We follow thoughts and what way they go and for what reason. We then attempt to intercede on those thoughts by trying to bridle, steer, and prod them on. We do so with varying degrees of success. I have long wondered what initial will motivates that painful capture and subduing of a thought, but that is not my concern for today. I watch as those thoughts lead to other thoughts. Some are necessary next steps, meaning that given the previous thoughts, this one would necessarily follow, at least eventually. However, that is not the type of thought our valuing minds are limited to. There are some jumps from one thought to another that are not necessary. They are still possible, given the facts, but there is no reason we must arrive at that conclusion, given the previous thoughts. This is my simple critique of much of society and I’s thoughts: We fail to distinguish between necessary and contingent thoughts. We fail to realize what the difference is between a thought we must then think, and a thought we can then think. This thinking has allowed me to look at tradition as I see it as something that is contingent or non-necessary given the facts. However, I see that it is perfectly contingently possible, or in other words, that we can do so. However, this is where the whole and the parts diverge. Whereas many given options are contingently available, it is necessary that one be affirmed. This is the essential motivation for Esse Maxim. This has also allowed me to more carefully exact the rules of logical and divide them in my mind also, as necessary and contingent. We reason this and that, but to what end? Before I take one more moment to critique reason as it stands, I want to celebrate it. It has been that great friend to me just below God and above the angels. 

I have written much, and yet I wonder if I said anything at all. When we work, let us ask to what end. When I write this, to this end do I write this chapter: That any tool held up as scalpel to the soul of man be brittle against its flesh. Logic is that tool I love most, but it is the utility for which we love that tool. I love being. I love existence, and man, and God, and children, and crying, and forgetting, and needing. No sterile method can take the place of what it is methodical towards. Let philosophy be for wisdom for those that seek for these marvelous thoughts to partner with them in their being. Let science be our eyeglass and logic be our blade, but let us still be the adventurer. Reason is in more than the context or form of an argument. It is also the contents of thought that comprise those forms. However, it is wisdom to ask about the totality of the system and the will that undergirds our asking. I have seen fools build proofs to allow their basest desires. They forget to keep their motives suspect. They also do everything they can to steal away thought from fate. When it comes to the epistemic nature of our atomic thoughts, we are left with the pursuit of labor which is to gain exposure to luck’s favor. We can’t force it’s hand. How many systems when we examine them do a reductio ad absurdum of themselves? How many more motivations have absurdities? If you seek pleasure, numbing your relative mind to it will destroy its vibrancy. Let us speak, and think, and wonder, and reason, and even deduce, but let us never get too far from that sheer will that sets us looking. I am at peace if my philosophy remains a secret. I am at ease if I gain no notoriety. I know that I can’t grit my teeth and grip the air with white-knuckles. I simply implore being with my efforts. No deduction would be passed being simply wrong. Let our “hows” and “whys” go in tandem, though not in equality. Let philosophy be the reasoning behind the living of a life and not the complexity of the academic. Let our sophistic systems make way for our real need to address our existence along with its implications. We will never know the world and yet can’t be anywhere else. Let our reasoning be filled with honesty and curiosity. Let us wonder about the world and other mind’s and their contents. Let us remember that non-necessity is not falsity. At the bottom of all facts is that contingency. If we can’t bless the labor to affirm that contingency, then we must curse all and die. We are our engagement and this wonderful blade and crown of logic is the “how,” but on rough seas soothed, let us see the reflection of the “why.”