Phallusies vs. accurate logic

[klonk]

"Phallusies" because if you employ fallacies to win arguments you are being a dick.

Recently I posted this list in TNT and it got enough responses to start being, you know, kind of like a topic, thus it went off topic for TNT.



So, let us continue the discussion in Off the Topic, where it is permissible to be on topic. The above is not an exhaustive list. There are more fallacies that are just as false, but the ones listed are very, very common.

[klonk]

Here are a few posts from over yonder, to show the trend of the argument to date:

If an "argument" has any underlining of intention to be "won" by either side, most of these fallacies would be considered aides in one's "warfare", I would think. Sun Tzu would disapprove!

To win by an inherently unsound argument calls into doubt what you mean by "win." If the purpose of argument is to advance our understanding of truth, everyone loses when you win that way. But if winning only means to sound right (never mind about being right) then I suppose anything goes.

Making this distinction is one of the things that lifted Western civilization out of the mud, so I am concerned that abandoning it is taking us back toward it.

klonk, my point was that "winning" shouldn't even be a part of an argument; getting closer to the truth should be the only goal. In reality however, I would venture a guess that 90% of all arguments are emotional in nature and are (therefore) egotistically-driven, to varying degrees. I.e. desire to "win", or to "feel right", is the primary reason for getting into them. It's just human nature. And if your goal is to win something, then the means are usually justified. That's why all these "fallacies" exist and aren't completely going away. Ever.

But, lest we digress any further (maybe start a new thread, if you'd like to continue?) from the topic, here's a semi-unrelated quote:

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

- George Bernard Shaw, 1903

[Dmitri]

There can be no discussion, because my logic is inphallusable.

[Michael]

LOL ^^

You are the Grand InPhalluster of TNT!

[klonk]

Then there is the related, and fascinating, question of phallus-fication. I'm not sure I understand it, but it sounds nice.

Phallusficationism

Naïve phallusficationism is an unsuccessful attempt to prescribe a rationally unavoidable method for science. Sophisticated methodological phallusfication, on the other hand, is a prescription of a way in which scientists ought to behave as a matter of choice. The object of this is to arrive at an evolutionary process whereby theories become less bad.

Naïve phallusfication considers scientific statements individually. Scientific theories are formed from groups of these sorts of statements, and it is these groups that must be accepted or rejected by scientists. Scientific theories can always be defended by the addition of ad hoc hypotheses. As Popper put it, a decision is required on the part of the scientist to accept or reject the statements that go to make up a theory or that might phallusfy it. At some point, the weight of the ad hoc hypotheses and disregarded phallusfying observations will become so great that it becomes unreasonable to support the base theory any longer, and a decision will be made to reject it.

In place of naïve phallusfication, Popper envisioned science as evolving by the successive rejection of phallusfied theories, rather than phallusfied statements. phallusfied theories are to be replaced by theories that can account for the phenomena that phallusfied the prior theory, that is, with greater explanatory power. For example, Aristotelian mechanics explained observations of everyday situations, but were phallusfied by Galileo's experiments,[citation needed] and were replaced by Newtonian mechanics, which accounted for the phenomena noted by Galileo (and others). Newtonian mechanics' reach included the observed motion of the planets and the mechanics of gases. The Youngian wave theory of light (i.e., waves carried by the luminiferous aether) replaced Newton's (and many of the Classical Greeks') particles of light but in turn was phallusfied by the Michelson-Morley experiment and was superseded by Maxwell's electrodynamics and Einstein's special relativity, which did account for the newly observed phenomena. Furthermore, Newtonian mechanics applied to the atomic scale was replaced with quantum mechanics, when the old theory could not provide an answer to the ultraviolet catastrophe, the Gibbs paradox, or how electron orbits could exist without the particles radiating away their energy and spiraling towards the centre. Thus the new theory had to posit the existence of unintuitive concepts such as energy levels, quanta and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

At each stage, experimental observation made a theory untenable (i.e., phallusfied it) and a new theory was found that had greater explanatory power (i.e., could account for the previously unexplained phenomena), and as a result, provided greater opportunity for its own phallusfication.