The Argumentative Theory of Reasoning

The ancient Greeks thought rationality, our ability to reason, was the distinguishing feature of humanity. It allowed humans to identify and search for higher truths, allowing us to move beyond the purely physical realm of the natural world. Now, cognitive and social scientists have developed the argumentative theory of reasoning, which suggests that reason evolved to win arguments. Rationality is a function of the evolutionary requirement to persuade.

Read the article here.

Moral Arguments

When making arguments about moral acts, can you build premises around objective moral facts? Or, are all our moral claims a construct of  opinion and/or cultural constructions? Discover Magazine posted the following debate between bloggers:

You can’t use logic to derive moral commandments solely from facts about the world, even if those facts include human desires. Of course, you can derive moral commandments if you sneak in some moral premise; all I’m trying to say here is that we should be upfront about what those moral premises are, and not try to hide them underneath a pile of unobjectionable-sounding statements. 

As a warm-up, here is an example of logic in action:

All men are mortal.

Socrates is a man.

Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

The first two statements are the premises, the last one is the conclusion. (Obviously there are logical forms other than syllogisms, but this is a good paradigmatic example.) Notice the crucial feature: all of the important terms in the conclusion (“Socrates,” “mortal”) actually appeared somewhere in the premises. That’s why you can’t derive “ought” from “is” — you can’t reach a conclusion containing the word “ought” if that word (or something equivalent) doesn’t appear in your premises.

This doesn’t stop people from trying. Carrier uses the following example (slightly, but not unfairly, paraphrased):

Your car is running low on oil.

If your car runs out of oil, the engine will seize up.

You don’t want your car’s engine to seize up.

Therefore, you ought to change the oil in your car.

At the level of everyday practical reasoning, there’s nothing wrong with this. But if we’re trying to set up a careful foundation for moral philosophy, we should be honest and admit that the logic here is obviously incomplete. There is a missing premise, which should be spelled out explicitly:

We ought to do that which would bring about what we want.

Crucially, this is a different kind of premise than the other three in this argument; they are facts about the world that could in principle be tested experimentally, while this new one is not.

Read the entry here, the counterpoint here.

"Colin Powell Demands Answers Over WMD lies"

Colin Powell has called on the CIA and Pentagon to explain why they failed to alert him to the unreliability of a key source behind claims of Saddam Hussein's bio-weapons capability. The source, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi or "Curveball" as his US and German handlers called him, admitted fabricating evidence of Iraq's secret biological weapons program

Read the story here.

George Tenet, then head of the CIA, replied to the revelation on his personal website with an excerpt from his 2007 memoir, " At the Center of the Storm:"

Curve Ball appeared to be an invaluable asset. He wasn’t. As the Silberman-Robb Commission, a presidential panel looking into Iraq intelligence shortcomings, would report in March 2005, sirens should have been going off all over the place. Whether they were or not is a matter of fierce debate.

Recap: Lessons 1-4

We started with basic terms, Philosophy, Ethics and Morality, and we made a distinction between Ethics and Morality for the purpose of this course. Remember, most people use the terms Ethics and Morality interchangeably (though they wouldn’t say something like “business morality” or “the ethic of the story”). We make the distinction here because (1) the words have seperate roots and origins, and (2) when we look at the etymology, we find that ancient difference informs an important feature of your relationship to the Academy.

It goes something like this: You come here with an established set of morals. The job here at the Academy is to present to you our military ethic. Your job then is (1) to decide whether you want to be a part of the military, and (2) to adopt the military ethos. We all operate under the assumption that the answer to (1) is “yes,” so the real work is going on with (2). Adopting the military ethos is a process, not something you do overnight. Throughout that process, we, the faculty, staff and personnel at the Academy, work to reinforce your decision in various ways. Ultimately, we’re working to persuade you to adopt our ethos. That may sound strange at first, but much of human communication and interaction amounts to little more than some function of persuasion. In class I said philosophers have two main tasks; to analyze and to persuade. The same could be said for any academic field. Science, for instance, does the majority of its business behind the scenes, with scientists working to persuade one another about what constitutes evidence. In the Air Force, our “official” (i.e., the one we learn in PME) definition of leadership is “the art and science of influencing and directing people to accomplish the assigned mission.” Sometimes the best way to persuade someone is to have them persuade themselves, so your fist assignment for the course, reading George F. Will’s lecture and answering the two questions, was designed to have you reflect on your own process of internalizing the military ethos up to this point.

We talked in class about how persuasion moves one to adopt a belief or position or course of action and how it’s based on argument. We looked at the construction of arguments and the different types, how our experience of the world is matured through argument, and how we judge good arguments from the bad ones, which is the critical step in developing our knowledge. On that last point, the Harry Frankfurt reading took us beyond fallacies with his work on BS. We read him as an exemplar of how philosophers do their work. His examinations of lying and intent are also applicable to your experience with the Honor Code here at the Academy. Your second assignment will explore that further and consider whether Frankfurt might offer some enhancement to the Code and its application.

Finally, we applied some tools of the trade to a case study by taking a critical look at the justifications for going to war in Iraq and identifying the bad arguments, i.e., those that failed to persuade.