Do you know why talking heads never progress intellectually or pragmatically? Because they don't understand simple logic.
The current discussion about Caroline Kennedy's "qualifications" to be a New York Senator provides a paradigmatic example.
Caroline Kennedy is smart, decent, charismatic, compassionate, intellectually honest, and accomplished.
She is also part of an amazing family.
What experience is it that she lacks? Wheeling and dealing with slimy lobbyists? Wheeling and dealing with other hacks to pass legislation which weakens the American economy?
Hitler and Stalin had a lot of experience. So do Cheney, Mugabe and Rod Blagojevich.
Strom Thurmond and Wilbur Mills had a lot of experience.
On the other hand, it was claimed that Barack Obama, John Kennedy and George Washington lacked experience.
The tragedy is that when political hacks blather on about lack of experience, our great free press representatives just sit there like deer in the headlights.
Why couldn't we hear something like the following just once?
Representative Slimebag, you say Caroline Kennedy is not qualified to represent the State of New York. Which of the following is in your chain of logic:
1. All experienced people are intelligent and just.
2. Caroline is not experienced.
3. Therefore, Caroline is not intelligent and just.
Well, we can see several flaws here...
Many experienced people are neither intelligent or just.
Caroline Kennedy is experienced, just not in the way you care about.
Since 1. is false, 3. is meaningless.
Let's try again.
1. Only experienced people can be effective senators.
2. Larry Craig and Ted Stevens are experienced.
3. Therefore, only people like them should be senators.
Well, you get the idea.
What we need is a Federal Department of Logic to beat down all the sophomoric opinions which pollute the airwaves. Anytime there is a debate over something that matters, war, social security, education, health, agriculture, bailouts, welfare...we subject the various arguments to fairly rigorous testing, including:
1. Is your logic fuzzy, classical, boolean, quantum, or some other mode?
2. Do you follow Frege, Cantor, Russell, Turing or Hilbert?
3. Did you use truth tables or truth trees in developing your argument?
4. Did you check for tautologies, contradictions, inconsistencies...?
5. Did you use the six easy sentential logic statements or the ten hard ones?
More later.
Lee
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