The Politician's Fallacy

When tragic events capture the nation's attention, the people, horrified at what has occurred, rightly ask what can be done to prevent such things from ever happening again. In turn, our elected representatives in Washington are often stirred to do one of the following (based on your level of cynicism toward politicians):

1) Act swiftly and smartly to address the situation
2) Immediately release a public statement before having found out what actually happened
3) Cancel their afternoon tee time and return to Capitol Hill so they can nap through emergency committee hearings

And in the midst of all this swift acting, public speaking, and committee napping, the politician, in trying to decide what course of action to take, usually goes through the following erroneous thought process, explained well in the British TV series Yes, Prime Minister:

Something must be done.
This is something.
Therefore, this must be done.

We shouldn't attribute this logical fallacy solely to politicians, even though I have done so in the title of this post. After all, it's usually the clamoring of the people to "Do something!" that provides the major premise (i.e. the first line) to this syllogism. Still, it is the politician who is able to act on it, so the buck stops there.

It's understandable. Something happens that shakes us and scares us, like a terrorist attack, or a mass public shooting, or a nuclear meltdown caused by a combined earthquake and tsunami. We don't want it to happen again. We don't feel we can wait one second longer to address the issue. Look at the death/destruction/horror/sadness that this caused. We can't let it happen again! We've got to do something NOW!

While this emotional reaction is to be expected, we ought not necessarily concede to its demands. Our heads need to temper our hearts if the desires of our hearts are to be truly satisfied; for the heart knows what it wants, but the head usually knows better how to get it.

Let's look at an example to illustrate the differences between emotionally charged perceptions and fact-based realities. A mass shooting happens, or a string of publicized mass shootings happen. People feel like there is an epidemic. But actually mass shootings are at their lowest levels in decades. People may point to the assault weapons ban passed in the 1990s and say, "Look, shootings went down after the weapons ban was passed! It must have worked!" But look at the broader picture: during that time, all violent crimes went down, including homicides as a percentage of violent crime. Did the ban on assault weapons also lower incidences of poisoning, strangulation, drowning, stabbing, and other acts of violence? Unlikely. It would seem multiple societal factors were at work. This seems to be further supported by the fact that overall homicide rates have tracked closely with firearm homicide rates over the last 40 years.

(Hat tip to William Briggs for the statistics.)

If we don't take all of these facts into account, we risk committing the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc, or "After this, therefore because of this." One might think that because overall crime went down after the ban of assault weapons, it was the ban that caused the decrease in crime. This is not necessarily the case; you would need more information to demonstrate this, and the information provided above suggests it's unlikely.

You might say, "But surely if we ban assault weapons, it will be much harder to commit crimes with assault weapons?" Yes, but if your goal is not strictly to reduce assault weapon crime, but violent crime, an assault weapon ban won't do the trick. Cities like Washington, D.C. and Chicago, which have some of the nation's strictest handgun laws, also have the highest rates of murder and handgun violence. Violent crime is a larger problem than the weapons available with which to perpetrate it. We can't lull ourselves into a false sense of security by doing something and saying, "All right, we've done something. Crisis averted." We might feel like things are worse than ever, but that doesn't mean they are. We might feel like banning certain types of weapons will prevent violent crimes, but that isn't necessarily the case.

You might say, "But why does your average citizen need automatic weapons and clips with dozens of rounds?" A good question, one involving the proper intent and interpretation of the Second Amendment and the rights of citizens to defend themselves. But it's a separate question from whether banning automatic weapons will reduce violent crime. Let's not confuse our terms. Let's stay focused on the task at hand.

Don't get me wrong. Don't interpret me to be saying something I'm not. Don't make me out to be saying more than I am. There may be good reasons to ban or limit the sale of certain types of weapons. Whether people should have access to certain types of weapons is a different issue from whether the availability of those weapons leads to more crime. But that's not the point at issue, and it doesn't help to meld two distinct questions together.

This is just one of the most recent examples to come up, but it's a common theme in our political discourse. To take an example dear to the other side of the aisle: our nation was attacked by terrorists in 2001, and since then our defense spending has grown increasingly, largely due to the extended prosecution of two wars. For some, the level of our defense spending has become a totem for how seriously we take our national security: if you want to cut defense spending, you're acquiescing somehow; if you want to increase defense spending, you're addressing the threats to our country. You might ask whether we could do more with less money, whether more advanced fighter jets are what's needed to combat terrorists, or whether we need to build more aircraft carriers when we have 10, while no one else has more than two, including China and Russia with one each. But to some, they are less interested in how effective our spending is than how much it is.

The point is: if we want to address a particular societal problem, let's take the time to examine the relevant facts (and sift out the irrelevant facts) and not let our emotional reaction, justified as the feelings themselves might be, overwhelm our thinking resulting in our doing something simply for the sake of doing something.

Church Chat II

The first edition of "Church Chat," in which I explained the meanings and etymologies of a number of Church-related words, was by far the most read post I've made on this site. Given its popularity, I thought it worthwhile to bring you another round of ecclesiastical vocabulary.

Confirmation -- from Latin confirmare, "to strengthen." In the Sacrament of Confirmation, we are strengthened in the gift of the Holy Spirit which we received at our Baptism. In the ancient world, oil was used to aid in healing injuries (as we still use ointments today for the same purpose); that is, it was used to make a sick person stronger. Sin is a sickness of the soul, and the anointing of this sacrament (as well as the Anointing of the Sick) acts as a sort of booster shot to fortify our our spiritual immune system. (This is not an exhaustive explanation of this sacrament, but it does describe an aspect of it.)

Grace -- from the Latin gratia, which, apart from itself meaning grace, means "favor, thanks, goodwill." The grace of God is not something I can adequately explain in a paragraph, but suffice it to say: it is God's sharing of His own life with us. It is His free gift to us, unearned and undeserved, a demonstration of His favor and goodwill. Here would need to follow a whole treatise on the distinction between earning and meriting, on how God's gracious action in us does not take away our freedom but rather grants freedom to us, and a host of other issues, but you might be better served by reading the section in the Catechism on grace. Say, that's a good one...

Catechism -- from the Greek katechesis, meaning "oral instruction," more literally "to sound down (into the ears)." Perhaps it's something of an oddity to use a word meaning "oral instruction" for a written text, but remember that the purpose of a catechetical text is use in teaching. This is much more evident in the format of past versions such as the Baltimore Catechism with its question-and-answer format. Catechisms are used in catechesis to hand on the faith. Say, that reminds me....

Tradition -- from the Latin tradere, "to hand over." Tradition, then, is that which is handed on, often used in a generational context: one generation bequeaths something to another. This word is used to describe the way in which the Christian faith is transmitted to succeeding generations, through teaching, example, and religious practice (especially the liturgy), and written works such as Scripture. (It seems to me that instead of drawing this divide between Scripture and Tradition, it would be more accurate to describe Scripture as part of and a product of the Tradition.) Note: The Latin word's flexibility allows it to mean both handing something on, like an heirloom, or handing someone over, as in betrayal. (If you look at the Latin text of the Mass, you'll see in the Eucharistic Prayers that when it says "on the night [Jesus] was betrayed" the Latin word is tradebatur, "he was handed over/betrayed.")

Reconciliation -- (I've mentioned this one in a previous post, but it's good enough to include again.) from Latin re-, "again," con-, "with," and cilia, "eyelash." To be reconciled, then, is to literally be eyelash to eyelash with someone once again. It is regaining a closeness you once had. And you can't be much closer to someone than having your eyelashes entangled. Think of a parent and child with their foreheads pressed together, or a couple kissing. That kind of intimate closeness. That's what reconciliation is about.

Saint -- from Latin sanctus, "holy." Like many Latin adjectives, sanctus is a verb form, the perfect passive participle. That fancy term means it's a word expressing an action that happened to a subject in the past, the effect of which continues into the present; in this case, sanctus is "one who has been made holy (and is still holy)." The saints are those who have received God's sanctifying grace and have cooperated with it and been made holy.

Liturgy -- from the Greek laos, "people," and ergon, "work." Liturgy is "the work of the people," or "a public service." Public services are done to satisfy obligations either owed to the people or required to be done by the people. We are obliged to worship God. But the obligation to worship God is not arbitrary or external, but necessary or internal. We need to worship God like we need to eat, or breath, or be with our loved ones. Too often, though, we substitute the good food of God for the junk food of lesser goods or goods twisted into evils (whether it be sleeping in rather than getting up and going to Mass, or seeking God's love through others via lust instead of self-giving love). We choose what might taste good for a moment, but will make us less healthy spiritually in the long run. This does give us what we need. The Mass, the Sacred Liturgy, is the pre-eminent place in which we get what we most need, for there we receive the true food, the Bread of Life and the Chalice of Salvation, the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. For unless we eat His flesh and drink His blood, we have no life within us.

Chronological Snobbery

A mother was speaking with her son and his girlfriend. The latter two were living together, and the mother was expressing concern about what the grandmother might think of two unmarried people “shacking up.” The girlfriend smiled condescendingly, patted the mother on the arm, and said, “It’s 2012, dear.”

What an odd response. What does the year have to do with the morality of the action in question? Did I miss the announcement at the beginning of the year saying, “With the advent of the new year, the following actions are now permissible…”?

I know what she was getting at: “People don’t think that way anymore. Times have changed. We’ve moved on.”

C.S. Lewis and his friend Owen Barfield had a term for this way of thinking: chronological snobbery,

“the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited. You must find why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood. From seeing this, one passes to the realization that our own age is also "a period," and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread assumptions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend them” (Surprised by Joy, chapter 13).

It would be an argument something like this: “People used to believe in a geocentric universe. People also used to believe that fornication was morally wrong. People no longer believe in a geocentric universe. Therefore, people should no longer believe that fornication is morally wrong.” That’s a bit silly, isn’t it? What’s the causal connection between those two things? Is it that simply because times have changed, that means they should have? Where does this sort of thinking come from?

It’s my theory that people are getting their disciplines mixed up. They’re taking what they find to be true in science and applying it to the realm of ethics, which is a bit like trying to play baseball according to the rules of football: “That’s ball four, so it’ll be first and goal for the Giants.” Allow me to explain.

In empirical science, knowledge progresses through a process of formulating hypotheses, gathering data, analyzing that data, and extrapolating to general theories based on the outcome. When new data is gathered, previously held theories may be discarded if they no longer fit the data. Most people have neither the time nor the educational background to personally verify each new scientific discovery, and assume that this mechanism of advancement in knowledge is working as it should; they assume that science progresses. If an old theory isn’t held anymore, it’s because it’s been disproved. People used to believe the universe was held together by ether, or that the sun went around the earth, or that the universe was eternal; but they don’t believe those things anymore, so the scientific method must have eliminated them.

It may be the case that people, consciously or unconsciously, assume that this same sort of process takes place within philosophy, and especially morality. Perhaps they think that each generation of philosophy is a disputation with the previous generation in which the present group logically contradicts the ideas of the old guard, thus advancing our knowledge of the nature of being, or of ethics, or of the very logic being used to argue. If people used to believe in objective truth, or the real correspondence between language and reality, or the immorality of certain acts, but don’t anymore, it must be because these notions have been demonstrated to be false. If people don’t hold an idea anymore, it must have been disproved. …Right?

Really? Can you tell me when and how this occurred? Can you give me the name of the thinker who made this discovery? Can you demonstrate these new philosophical conclusions to me through valid argumentation? If you think you can, by all means, let’s proceed with the discussion; at least then, we’re investigating the matter and thinking about it, and not making the absurd move of pointing to the calendar and proclaiming “QED.” (* “QED” = quod erat demonstrandum, “That which was to be proved,” traditionally used in math and logic at the end of an argument when the conclusion has successfully been demonstrated.) You cannot simply assume that an idea has been reasonably disproved because it has fallen out of favor with “people” (a slippery term itself: Which people? Where? When?).

A person is quite prone to abandoning moral truths if it’s convenient; we need only look at our own lives to see that demonstrated. If enough people find it convenient to abandon the same moral truth for convenience, suddenly “people don’t believe that anymore.” Then if you were to ask someone why they didn’t believe that, say, “shacking up” was immoral, they’d respond with something like, “What? This isn’t the Middle Ages. It’s 2012.” They assume that, because either the mysterious “they” or “people” no longer hold that idea to be true, it must be because someone, somewhere at some time has shown that moral notion to be false, even if they can’t tell you how. “I can’t detail why Einstein’s model replaced Newton’s, but I trust that ‘they’ got it right; I can’t tell you why society has accepted X, Y, and Z that it used to reject, but I trust ‘they’ got it right.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about this phenomenon of chronological snobbery as our country has been engaged in a discussion over whether to re-define the institution of marriage. Well, actually, I wish there were a discussion: then we might actually get somewhere. A discussion would involve stating principles, reviewing arguments and lines of reasoning, considering what the good of the human person and human society is, and the like. But what we seem to get instead is a lot of name-calling (“bigot,” “homophobe,” “Nazi,” etc.); a whole lot of appeals to popular opinion, or rather, the opinions of the popular (“Well, Brad Pitt is in favor of same-sex marriage, shouldn’t you be? I don’t see your name on any Oscar nomination lists”); and an awful lot of chronological snobbery: “That’s so backward. This isn’t the Dark Ages. Be on the right side of history.”

As G.K. Chesterton said, “Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.” Just because an idea suddenly becomes popular does not mean that its contrary has been demonstrated false. But if you think it has, present your reasoning. Let’s examine your premises to see if they’re true. Let’s see if they lead to your conclusion. Let’s have a discussion. Let’s not just say, “It’s 2012.” After all, there are only 40 days left in 2012; if you think you’re right simply because “it’s 2012,” maybe in 2013 you’ll be wrong.

The Week in Review: Hammy Jokes

Not too many events of note to share with you from this last week. It was pretty standard. (I apologize for again not producing a mid-week post, but I've got one sitting on deck, ready to go for this week.) I'll share a few random thoughts and stories:

-- Could someone explain to me why Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, a Frenchman, drinks Earl Grey tea, quotes Shakespeare, and has an English accent? Did the British finally take over France some time before the 24th century?

-- I had the following exchange with a customer in our sandwich shop the other day:

Customer: What is the difference between the ham and the smoked ham?

Me (trying to keep a straight face): Well... one is smoked, and the other isn't.

Customer: OK, so one is smokier than the other?

Me: Um... yeah.

Customer: OK, give me half of each on sourdough.

-- My landlord asked me if I knew any philosophy jokes, so I told him this one: Rene Descartes walks into a bar and orders a few rounds. Near the end of the night, the bartender asks, "Would you like another?" Descartes answers, "I think not." And disappears.

(See, because Descartes' famous line was Cogito ergo sum, "I think, therefore, I am." So the joke is that when he says, "I think not," he would cease to exist because he's no longer thinking [though that's not quite what is meant by the phrase--his point is that he can be sure of his own existence because, were he to doubt his existence, the very act of his doubting means there's someone doing the doubting. Anyway....)

On to the week in class:

Ancient Philosophy: Neo-Platonism has about as much to do with the teachings of Plato as modern-day Lutheranism has to do with the teachings of Martin Luther.

Philosophy of Nature: We've been addressing questions like, "What is time? What is motion? What is space?" You know, the simple, easy stuff. To paraphrase St. Augustine, "I know what it is until somebody asks me." It's the things that are most fundamental, the things we take for granted, that are the most difficult to define or explain. But let's try: both time and motion exist as part of continua. That is, time does not precede as a series of discrete moments, like a series of dots forming a line; nor does motion proceed in such halting steps. They are potentially or theoretically divisible into infinite parts, but not actually divisible in that way. Both time and motion are fluid transitions from something not being the case to something being the case; and indeed, we only know time because of motion, or change. Motion is the measurement of change over time. Combine this with Einstein's theory of relativity, which states that time and speed can only be measured relative to the observer, and we see that there are as many times as there are motions. Yeah, chew on that one for a while. I've spent hours over the last few weeks reading this stuff, and you get it condensed into one neat, hopefully comprehensible paragraph. You're welcome.

Intro to New Testament: "Apocalyptic" is not a word that means "scary," "destructive," or "catastrophic." The Greek word apokalypsis means "the remove the veil, to uncover, to reveal." That's why the Book of Revelation in your granny's old Bible is called "The Book of Apocalypse." We associate that word with the above-mentioned adjectives because, upon a surface reading of the text, we see an awful lot of earthquakes and fires and wrath and famines and plagues and such. These things are secondary to the real core of apocalyptic literature: someday, God is going to right the wrongs in the world, and vindicate those who have been faithful to Him. Sure, that's going to entail a bit of carnage for those who haven't been faithful, but let's not focus on the Four Horsemen so much that we forget the New Jerusalem and the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.

Aristotelian Logic: The more I study logic, the more I become convinced that it ought to be a required subject in high schools. Back in the day, it was part of the basic trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and logic that any person would have to learn before moving on to other subjects; the assumption was that you wouldn't have the ability to understand anything else if you didn't have a grasp of these three. I've found the study of logic to be a great aid to my own thinking. Imagine how different society would be if everyone were well-guarded against fallacious arguments?

A Very Unique Post

Many know me to be a stickler for correct usage in language. For example, if you use "further" in reference to a physical distance, I will inform you that the word you wish to employ is "farther," but I'd be happy to discuss it further with you. If I ask you where John is and you tell me that "Him and Jack went to the store," I will cringe, mourn the loss of the nominative pronoun, and ask you to let me know when he and Jack get back.

Yeah, I'm that guy. I'm not proud of it. Recently I've tried to curtail my corrections to those instances that actually hinder understanding, as opposed to every case of impropriety. But my purpose in this brief post is different. Today, I aim my fire at the hyper-correcter.

You know these people. These are the ones who think that "me" can never be used in conjunction with another noun, and will chastise you for saying, "He gave a dollar to Sam and me." "Uh, I'm sorry, but it should be 'Sam and I,'" they'll say, the wattage of their condescending smile powered by the energy of their own sense of self-satisfaction. Next time that happens, you may politely inform them that since sentence calls for an object pronoun, "me" is correct; you can further enlighten them with the rule-of-thumb of dropping the conjoined noun and seeing how one would construct the sentence then: "'He gave a dollar to me.' Oh. I see."

Another example is on my mind at the moment. It may prove controversial, but I think it speaks to a deeper philosophical and theological truth.

"This is a very unique blog post."

Scoff McOvercorrecter would see that sentence and start having involuntary spasms. "Excuse me, but 'unique' means 'one-of-a-kind,' 'nothing like it,' so there's no way to qualify that: something is either unique or it isn't."

I think that's wrong. I think that's wrong in an important way.

Take the following number sequences:

12345
12234
12223

Each of these sequences is unique in comparison to the others because no two sequences are exactly alike; they are different, unrepeated. And yet it would be perfectly sensible to say that the first sequence is "more unique" than the other two because it repeats no numbers within itself, whereas the second and third sequences repeat the number 2. The last two share a characteristic with each other that they don't share with the first, and yet they are truly unique despite that commonality.

Or say you had three golden retrievers in front of you. Each one is a different entity, and is unique in that sense; there is no other dog that is that dog. Yet one dog is considerably bigger than the other two and has a scar on its snout from a fight with a raccoon. All of the dogs are unique, but that one is more unique than the others; if it had six legs, it would be very unique among dogs.

When we use the phrase "more unique" or "very unique," we are recognizing that the thing we are describing 1) is an individual which belongs to a set (it's a species in a genus, for you Aristotelians), 2) shares many traits with other things in that set, but 3) that thing also has features which set it apart from that set. We are acknowledging the gradations of likeness and unlikeness between things.

The over-correcter would like to say that "unique" means "one-of-a-kind" in an absolute sense, but only God could properly be described in this way. God does not belong to a genus or species. God has no equal. And yet, God is still "like" other things in some ways; or rather, things are like God in some ways. Anything that exists has some relation to other things that exists. This is called "the analogy of being." It is because of the analogy of being that we can have any knowledge of God, or really, any abstract or conceptual knowledge of anything.

If anything were truly "absolutely unique," if no analogy could be made between it and anything else, you could not know it. You would have no mental categories in which to place it. You would have no way to describe or define it. After all, when someone asks you to describe something, what do they say: "What's it like?" That's asking for an analogy. Saying something is unique only prompts the question, "As compared to what?" If you take away the ability to compare (analogy), you then take away the ability to call something unique. It's a self-defeating proposition.

So, to conclude: if you're one of those people who say that you can't qualify "unique," like saying "very unique" or "more unique," the consequence of your position is that we can have no conceptual knowledge of anything, and no knowledge of God. Do you really want to say that? I doubt many people would take that position; if you did, you'd be very unique.

(There may well be a hole in this argument that a baby elephant could comfortably hide in, as I have not had a coursework in epistemology or metaphysics as of yet, and may be a little out of my depth, but it makes sense to me. Please do feel free to charitably point out any errors you spot.)

The Three Methods of Persuasion

Aristotle, he of such nicknames as “The Stagirite” (which refers to his birthplace, Stagira), “The Philosopher” (which St. Thomas Aquinas calls him in his works, but only when he agrees with him), or “Ari” or “Telly” to his friends, wrote on nearly every topic one could imagine: ethics, physics, metaphysics, biology, zoology, poetry… I’m surprised he didn’t release a cookbook. Today’s focus will be on another area, rhetoric, and specifically on the three ways or “proofs” into which Aristotle classified all persuasive speech. Then you’ll be able not only to use these yourself, but to defend yourself against the persuasive attempts of others, be they politicians or used car salesmen (but I repeat myself).

Aristotle said that all persuasive speech can be divided into three categories:

Logos, “the appeal to reason”: We could perhaps also call this, “Use your head!” In this sort of appeal, the speaker uses facts, figures, arguments, graphs, charts, principles, axioms, and any other method aimed at the gray matter between your ears to persuade you to adopt the speaker’s viewpoint.

Pathos, “the appeal to emotion”: We could call this, “Have a heart!” Here the speaker’s objective is to tug at your heartstrings, to incite an emotional response in you, to make you feel what they feel (or, more cynically, what they want you to feel). The aim is not to induce your head to make a calculation, but rather to put you in the emotional state the speaker thinks will compel you to adopt the speaker’s viewpoint.

Ethos, “the appeal to the integrity of the speaker”: We could perhaps call this, “Listen to your gut.” Strangely, this method often has little to do with the subject matter at hand, but instead adduces the speaker’s own trustworthiness as the criterion of persuasion. “Trust me,” “You know who I am,” “We’ve been through a lot together,” and other such phrases are typical of this type of appeal. Aristotle says that this appeal is the most powerful method of persuasion.

Let’s use a concrete example to illustrate these: taxes! Who doesn’t love a good ol’ debate on tax policy, right? It has all the excitement of a root canal and all the clarity of Gabby Johnson’s speech from Blazing Saddles. But let’s examine some typical persuasive speech on tax policy and see what we can see.

Logos: “If we keep taxes low, it will encourage businesses to grow, which means hiring more workers, which means more incomes to tax, which actually means more revenue for the government. After all, what’s a larger number: 45% of 100, or 36% of 200?” (The speaker argues that, granted his premise that low taxes means more hiring and thus more income to be taxed, that a smaller percentage of a higher number produces a greater result than a higher percentage of a lower number.)

OR: “My opponent’s numbers don’t add up. Besides, it is not guaranteed that lower taxes will necessarily make businesses hire more people, so we ought not to rely on that.” (The speaker counter-argues by challenging that premise, saying that there is no logically necessary connection between low taxes and increased revenue.)

Pathos: “The middle class is suffering in this country, while the rich take advantage of loopholes to pay less. Companies make higher profits than ever before, while you struggle to put food on the table, or send your kids to college. Enough is enough! The wealthy need to pay their fair share!” (The speaker is appealing to the listener’s desire for justice, or the speaker is trying to stir up feelings of envy.)

OR: “The government is trying to take away your hard-earned money to feed the bureaucratic fat cats in Washington! Your money belongs to, not to the federal government! What’s fair is for you to be able to keep as much of your earnings as possible.” (The speaker is appealing to the listener’s desire for security, or the speaker is trying to stir up feelings of fear.)

Ethos: “I’m a businessman with 30 years of experience, and I’ve successfully run a state, a hospital, a prison, and in one case, a state prison hospital. I know what it takes to be successful, to balance a budget.” (Here the speaker, appealing to his past success, asks you to trust him in making decisions.)

OR: “According to the non-partisan Institute for the Advanced Study of Things and Stuff, my opponent’s plan will increase the debt by eleventy-gajillion dollars by next Thursday.” (Here the speaker appeals to the prestige of an institution as a reason to trust what he says.)

After looking at these examples, can you tell why is ethos the most persuasive type of argument? Logos relies on the audience’s ability or willingness to follow a complex argument, or apprehend a large amount of data, or accept the premises of your argument as true: many times an audience is unwilling or unable to do this, or they get lost in the attempt. With pathos, one must realize how slippery it can be to try to manipulate someone’s emotions: you may not produce the effect you intended. With ethos, the task is somewhat simpler: all you have to do is get the audience to trust you. They don’t have to wade through a morass of syllogisms and propositions; they don’t have to be carefully led to the proper emotional state; they simply have to believe that you would tell them the truth. And when people trust you enough, they’ll go along with what you say, whether or not they totally understand it, as a child with a parent, a student with a teacher, a novice with a mentor. And because it is so powerful, when it backfires, things can go horribly, horribly wrong. If the audience finds that the speaker was lying to them, that betrayal can diminish the audience’s ability to trust anyone. If the an immoral speaker uses that trust to manipulate people, we can see evil on the scale of Nazi Germany, the genocide in Rwanda, or that of Charles Manson or Jim Jones, all of whom led people to do the unthinkable.

To quote Father Christmas in the film version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, “These are tools, not toys. Bear them well.” You can appeal to someone’s reason validly, or you can use fallacious arguments to trick them. You can appeal to their emotions to make them feel the true weight of the matter at hand, or you can manipulate them into a malleable state, ready to do your bidding. You can appeal to someone’s trust in you to make them see when they wouldn’t otherwise understand, or you can use it to stab them in the back. Be careful how you use them.

Hypocrisy: What It Is and What It Ain't

You sometimes see something like the following in public life: Person A speaks against a certain practice or policy as somewhere between being detrimental to national interests and being morally wrong; Person A is then found to be engaging in the very practice or policy he was condemning; Person A is declared a hypocrite for doing one thing and saying another. Whether it’s a pro-traditional marriage politician who’s been divorced three times, or an environmentalist being called out for flying all over the world in a private jet to speak to groups about how people shouldn’t fly all over the world in private jets, or public education advocates sending their own children to private schools, or an anti-drunk driving crusader getting popped for a DUI, society is quick to jump on the offender as an lying, two-faced hypocrite… and that’s if they’re feeling charitable.

But is that what hypocrisy is? Simply doing one thing and saying another?

No. I think there’s another piece that’s needed to complete the definition.

A hypocrite is someone who preaches against something BUT believes that it’s wrong when you do it, but OK when they do it. If they admit their mistake, then they are shown to be a sinner, or inconsistent, or capable of having a moment of weakness; but that’s not the same as hypocrisy. Hypocrisy lies in holding others to a standard different from oneself.

Let’s look at our examples. Take the anti-drunk driving crusader who’s charged with drunk driving. If they respond to the situation with a sincere admission to the effect of “I am so sorry, this was so wrong of me, I lost control of myself, it’s my fault,” that’s inconsistency between principle and action, a moment of imperfection (albeit a serious one, certainly). If they respond with a “Well, it was just once, I thought I was fine, nobody got hurt, what’s the big deal?” that’s hypocrisy. In the latter case, they’ve revealed the different standard to which they hold themselves: “Well, it’s not so bad if I do it, but if they do it….”

Or take the example of the pro-traditional marriage politician who’s been divorced three times. If he responds to criticisms by saying, “Yes, I’ve made some mistakes in my life, including not taking marriage seriously enough at times, and I regret that, which is why I’m all the more committed to this cause, as I see the importance of strong marriages and strong families for society,” he shows himself to be committed to the principle even if his practice has not always matched. If he were to respond by saying, “Look, that’s my life, I’m free to do as I please, I’m just one person, what’s it hurting you?” that’s hypocrisy. He’s holding himself to a different standard.

Notice, too, how often the hypocrite will play the “no harm, no foul” card. When they speak about the principle of their position, the underlying premise is that the thing is wrong in itself; but when they’re caught, suddenly it’s only wrong if somebody gets hurt. It’s a double-standard of morality. The hypocrite tries to get the principle to bridge the gap between the two standards, but the principle can’t support the weight of the act crossing over that chasm, and the principle snaps. The hypocrite has lost the principle.

When we see someone not practicing what they preach, we should first determine their attitude toward their lapse before we decide how to approach them. For the sinner who knows he has sinned needs encouragement to follow through on his penitence and firm purpose of amendment; the hypocrite needs to be shaken and jarred and made to realize his sin so that he may take that next step toward healing and integrity. If the sinner who has acknowledged his sin is chastised too vehemently, he may fall into despair; if the hypocrite is gently encouraged to get onto the right track, he may laugh as he would at a doctor who told him to keep up the good work on the physical therapy he was meant to be doing on his perfectly good knee.

Not all inconsistencies are hypocrisies. Properly distinguishing between the two could make the difference in saving someone’s soul.

The Three Most Important Questions

The ancient Greek philosopher Gorgias (each G is a hard G, like in “great,” not soft like in “gem,” and it’s definitely not pronounced like “gorgeous”) was a bit of an extreme fellow. He came along during a time when philosophers had been debating what the nature of reality was. First Thales said that everything was made of water, and that the water changed its form to make different things. Other philosophers suggested other substances. Then Heraclitus suggested that, really, everything is constantly changing, but things only appear to stay the same sometimes. Parmenides one-upped him and said just the opposite, that nothing ever changes, but things only appear to change sometimes. Gorgias then played the ultimate trump card and laid out his vision of reality: that it doesn’t exist at all.

He made the following four propositions:

Nothing exists. If it did exist, it could not be known. If it could be known, it could not be communicated. If it could be communicated, it could not be understood.

That, ladies and gents, is complete and total skepticism.

Now, when it’s put that bluntly, it seems ridiculous. And it is ridiculous. Gorgias’ second statement is a paradox: he claims to know that nothing can be known. And if he really believed it was impossible to communicate about anything, he wouldn’t have written a book attempting to communicate how it’s impossible to communicate anything. He wouldn’t have spent time carefully crafting the section on how nothing can be understood in the hopes that people would understand it. And I’m sure that when his book failed to sell and the repo man came to take his house, it would not have sufficed to tell the repo man “Sorry, nothing exists, including this house, and you, so you can’t take my house from me, because you’re not here, and there’s no house to take.” Then after the repo man punched him in the face, he could console himself with the knowledge that the repo man didn’t really exist, so he hadn’t been punched in the face… and come to think of it, he himself didn’t exist either, so he couldn’t be in pain.

The “nothing exists” one is a little hard to swallow, and you won’t find many people who go along with him on that. But Gorgias’ skepticism does leave us with important questions:

Is there truth? If there is truth, how can we know it? If we can know it, how can we express it?

These are perhaps the three most important questions we can ask about any subject. Any conversation on an issue or topic or problem, be it a debate on the floor of the US Senate or a chat over coffee between two friends, should start with these three questions. Is what we’re talking about a matter of opinion, or taste, or preference, or prudential judgment, or is there some principle, some question of right and wrong, some matter of “it is the case or it isn’t the case” about it? If it’s about the truth, how can we know the truth about the subject in question? Philosophy? Theology? Science? Some combination? Once we come to know this truth, how can we express it in a way others can understand? Description? Jargon? Analogy?

It seems that a lot of our current contentious political issues are so heated precisely because we can’t agree on the answers to these questions. Think about it. The question of same-sex marriage is essentially the first question: “Is marriage something with its own nature that should be preserved and respected, or is it an institution of entirely human construct, malleable at will?” That is, “Is marriage really something, or is it just whatever we call it?” Slapping each other with epithets and accusing people of hate doesn’t address that question, and thus it side-steps the crux of the whole issue. The abortion debate seems to be largely about the second question: One side says, “Who knows when life begins or when a human being becomes a person?” The other side says, “It’s obvious, isn’t it? It begins at the beginning.” (Of course, there is also the simple and sensible response to that first side: “If you say you don’t know, then don’t act. If you’re unsure whether it’s your son or a deer rustling the bushes, are you going to shoot?”) The third question seems to relate to the debate over “enhanced interrogation techniques vs. torture”: “Well, is it really easy to say what the distinction is between those two? Can we express that distinction?” “YES. Stop doing X, Y, and Z, it’s torture!” “Yeah, but… is it REALLY? I mean, can we say that for sure? Does that REALLY paint an accurate picture?” And you go in circles ad infinitum.

There are many, many, many, many, many, many, many other examples; I just grabbed what to me seemed to be the obvious ones. But they illustrate well the importance of first and foremost seeking the truth.

Of course, the most essential place to ask these questions is on the subject of religion, since it deals with the nature of ultimate reality. What is the truth? How do we know the truth? How can that truth be expressed? For a Christian, the answer to all three questions is the same: Jesus. Perhaps you don't agree with this just now. That's a subject for another post.

The Divine Go-Between: A Reflection on 1 Timothy 2:1-8

(The following is 1 Timothy 2:1-8, and then a reflection that I gave on that reading a few years back. Hope you enjoy.)

First of all, then, I ask that supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings be offered for everyone, for kings and for all in authority, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all devotion and dignity. This is good and pleasing to God our savior, who wills everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth. For there is one God. There is also one mediator between God and the human race, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself as ransom for all. This was the testimony 2 at the proper time. For this I was appointed preacher and apostle (I am speaking the truth, I am not lying), teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. It is my wish, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands, without anger or argument.

Folks, before we begin our reflection on the reading, there’s something you should know about me: I love language. I love the way that a word can hold an ocean of meaning in a syllable or two. I love how two words like “silver” and “argent” can have the same referent, but have a totally different feel and weight to them—no one would say we have an argent Chevy Caravan out in the parking lot. I like to play with words like toys, and reverence them as symbols that can effect grace in people’s lives, like “I absolve you,” or “This is my body.” Words are neat. All of that is to let you know why I’m going to focus so much on two words from this passage. I’ll magnify them, pull them apart, and glue them back together.

Those two words are “intercede” and “mediator”. Now, intercession itself is not in here, but it’s a good word to encapsulate the other words used for what Paul asks us to do: supplication, prayer, petition. Intercede, from the Latin intercedere, “to go between”: that’s what prayer for someone else is essentially doing, right? We act as a go-between, bringing the concerns of one party to another party, between our fellows and God. Paul says that we are to intercede for others, and this will contribute to their salvation. Paul juxtaposes this call to intercede with God’s salvific will, suggesting that our prayers will have an effect on the salvation of others. So, our intercession is important.

Then we have this other word, “mediator.” Paul says that Christ is “the one mediator” between God and humanity, the one given “as ransom for all.” But wait—if Christ is the one mediator, the one standing in the middle, in medio, of God and humanity, and we’re also going between God and humanity, aren’t we going to collide with each other? Get in each other’s way? If Christ is the one mediator whose work alone ransomed us, how is it that we can make intercession that contributes to the salvation of others? Isn’t there a contradiction here? A redundancy?

Nope. On the contrary, one depends on the other. It is because Christ stands in the middle that we can go between. It is because Christ is mediator that we can intercede. Before Christ’s saving sacrifice on the Cross, the chasm of sin between God and humanity was infinite. Christ has reconciled the two, brought them together, enabling us to go between. Christ can fill that gap between the divine and the human because he is a citizen of both those countries, because he has stretched out his arms between Heaven and Earth and done the biggest butterfly press in history to bring them together. It is because Christ is in the middle (in medio) that we can go between (intercedere). It is because Christ is the mediator that we can intercede for one another. He is the greatest of bridge-makers, the pontifex maximus.

Now before we simply say, “Thanks for the bridge, Jesus!” like a company of ungrateful infantry to a company of engineers and go to fight the battle on our own, let’s remember one other thing: Christ doesn’t only give us the bridge for our prayer, he gives us the prayer as well. The only reason we can even find this bridge is because of Christ who has led us there. And Christ has led us there, not externally, bribing us with a carrot or threatening us with a stick, but internally, tugging at our restless heart strings, conforming our will to his own, preparing a home for himself inside of us through the outpouring of his grace, until we say with St. Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” And it is the Spirit of Christ who prays in us, “with sighs too deep for words.” Christ not only builds the bridge, he gives us the strength to cross it, and the inspiration for the message we carry.

Now before we say, “Great, just carry me across, Jesus, let me know when we get there; I’ll be asleep in the back seat,” we must remember that we have our own responsibilities, too. God gives us the desire to pray, but we compose the prayer; it’s like Lennon and McCartney: no matter who does the majority of the work in a given instance, it’s always credited to both. God builds the bridge, and gives us the strength and desire to cross it, but we must choose to go. The Holy Cross Constitutions describe this relationship well: “Our mission is the Lord’s, and so is the strength for it.” And Christ’s mission is to save souls, to bring humanity back into friendship with God. So when I pray for my friend who has fallen away from the Church, or for my relative whose faith has been shaken, I am participating in the salvific work of Christ, because it’s Christ who lives in me, and prays in me, and gives me the strength to lift my brother or sister onto my shoulders and help them along the way. We do this first and foremost by prayer, supplication, intercession. Let us pray for one another that we may persevere. Let us intercede with our one mediator, Jesus Christ, Our Lord.

The Hidden Prayers of the Mass

Some of my favorite prayers of the Mass are the ones you don’t usually hear. Throughout the Mass, there are many prayers that the priest says inaudibly. Why is this, you might ask? Why should the priest pray prayers in the midst of a communal, public liturgy that no one else can hear? Couldn’t the people whom he’s leading in worship benefit from hearing those prayers? Quite possibly. I know that I have been given ample fodder for reflection on this prayer, as one example, said during the preparation rite:

“By the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity."

Here in this one sentence we’ve managed to pack in references to the Incarnation, the dual natures of Christ, transubstantiation, and apotheosis. That’s theological density equivalent to a neutron star. That’s a family fun-pack of divine truths in one convenient carrying case. It’s beautiful and profound (unlike my previous two sentences).

And you’ve probably heard it before. Many a priest will say out loud some or all of these prayers which the priest, according to the rubrics, is meant to say in audibly. Why do they do this? And why does the instruction say to pray the prayers inaudibly in the first place? I think both have to do with liturgical orientation. By that, I mean the direction toward which one is aimed during the liturgy. I mean essentially one’s interior disposition, though it can be expressed outwardly and physically (that’s the nature of sacramental worship—visible signs of invisible realities). One could put it as simply as, “What are you focused on during the Mass?”

A concrete and obvious example: in the Extraordinary Form of the Mass in the Latin Rite, the priest faces in the same direction as the congregation, while in the Ordinary Form, the priest faces the congregation themselves. The relationship between priest and people in these two orientations has a different look to it, and seems to send different messages. One could assign both a negative and a positive meaning to each. With ad orientem worship, one could call it (as people often do) “the priest with his back to the people,” as though he is scorning the lowly non-ordained plebs while he does the real work of worship; or one could call it “facing east,” as the great Advent hymn invites us to do, evoking the patristic notions of worshiping the Lord by facing the direction from which it was thought He would come again, with priest and people together looking at the rising sun as a sign of the Risen Son. With versus populum worship, one could see it as an unhealthy enclosure, the Christian community turning in on itself with the result that they see only themselves, singing, “We are called, we are chosen,” and forgetting who chose them or what they were called for; or one could see it as the appointed shepherd calling out to his flock, inviting them back to their home in the sheepfold—and one doesn’t call out to someone by facing away from them. These different views have the capacity to convey either a beautiful Christian truth or an ugly distortion of it. It’s possible within those two liturgical postures to develop one of the orientations described above: either self-exaltation standing on the backs of the peasants, or being the guide leading his people home; either the self-worshipping community, or the father addressing his spiritual children.

And notice similarities between the two positive and the two negative views: each of the positive views envision the priest doing a service for the people in the quest to commune with God, while each of the negative views envision priest and people losing sight of God and becoming self-obsessed. Whether the priest and people are facing one another or facing liturgical east, they must be focused on God; wherever the eyes of their heads are looking, the eyes of their hearts must be searching to behold the Lord.

So, back to the original question: why does the priest say some prayers inaudibly? Because they are intended to help him focus. These prayers serve as markers which can help the priest to maintain the proper liturgical orientation and stay on course. (Yes, priests’ minds can wander during Mass, too.) When the priest addresses a prayer to God quietly, instead of addressing a prayer to God out loud, the temptation to “play to the crowd,” to become focused on the congregation such that one loses sight of God, is thwarted. Now, obviously, the priest should be focused on the congregation to some degree, since it his duty to lead them in worship during the liturgy. But the relationship at the center of the Mass is not that of the priest with the people, but between the priest and people together with God.

Enough prelude, then. What are some of these “hidden prayers” of the Mass?

When the deacon reads the Gospel at Mass, you may notice that he bows before the priest and receives a blessing before going to the ambo. The priest blesses him, saying:

May the Lord be in your heart and on your lips,
that you may proclaim his Gospel worthily and well,
in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

When the priest reads the Gospel, he bows before the altar on his way to the ambo and prays:

Cleanse my heart and my lips, almighty God,
that I may worthily proclaim your holy Gospel.

After reading the Gospel, he kisses the book and says:

Through the words of the Gospel
may our sins be wiped away.

After the Offertory prayers (the two that begin “Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation”), the priest bows to the altar and prays:

With humble spirit and contrite heart
may we be accepted by you, O Lord,
and may our sacrifice in your sight this day
be pleasing to you, Lord God.

When he washes his hands, he prays:

Wash me, O Lord, from my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.

Just before the Agnus Dei, when the priest breaks a small piece from the host and puts it into the chalice, he prays:

May this mingling of the Body and Blood
of our Lord Jesus Christ
bring eternal life to us who receive it.

Just before saying “Behold the Lamb of God,” the priest prays one of these two prayers:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God,
who, by the will of the Father
and the work of the Holy Spirit,
through your Death gave life to the world,
free me by this, your most holy Body and Blood,
from all my sins and from every evil;
keep me always faithful to your commandments,
and never let me be parted from you.

Or:

May the receiving of your Body and Blood,
Lord Jesus Christ,
not bring me to judgment and condemnation,
but through your loving mercy
be for me protection in mind and body
and a healing remedy.

Before he receives Communion, the priest prays:

May the Body of Christ
keep me safe for eternal life.

And:

May the Blood of Christ
keep me safe for eternal life.

While purifying the vessels after Communion, the priest prays:

What has passed our lips as food, O Lord,
may we possess in purity of heart,
that what has been given to us in time
may be our healing for eternity.

I’ve given you these one after another, without comment from me, so that the texts could speak for themselves, and so you’d get a sense of the overall feel of them. These prayers, as with all the prayers of the Mass, are signals and reminders to us that when we are at Mass, we’re not at the meeting of a social club, or a show at a theatre: we are, all of us, participating in the presentation of Christ’s sacrifice to the Father for the forgiveness and healing of our sins, communing with God through the reception of His Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, receiving a taste of heaven. It can be hard to keep that in mind, for any of the billions of reasons that we get distracted in anything that we do. So let the prayers of the Mass keep you focused on what is at hand. Pay attention to what is being said and what you are saying. There are profound and beautiful truths there, if only we have the mental presence to realize it.

The Meaning of Reconciliation

(This is a re-print from something I posted on my old blog, but I think folks might enjoy it....)

This might be a bold statement, but I’m going for it: the whole of salvation history is summed up in the word “reconciliation.”

What exactly does this word mean? I heard this from David Fagerberg, one of my former professors at Notre Dame: “cilia” is the Latin word for eyelash. So let’s piece it together: if “re” means “again,” and “con” means “with”, then “re-con-cilia-tion” is “to again be eyelash to eyelash with [someone].”

That’s about as close as you can get to a person; but notice, the emphasis is on regaining the closeness that you once had with someone.

We as human beings once had a great closeness with God, in the beginning. In their innocence, Adam and Eve stood uncovered before God, not needing to hide anything. God walked with them in the garden in the cool of evening, like you might do with an old friend after a big dinner --that’s closeness, being con-cilia. But we, in our forebears, separated ourselves from God by our pride, withdrew from that closeness, that intimacy, by wanting to change the nature of the relationship, by trying to be equal to God. Instead of being docile infants held in our Father’s arms, cheek to cheek, we were squirrely two-year olds who squirmed out. And when we realized what we did, we hid, we covered ourselves, and we couldn’t look God in the face anymore.

But God loved us and wanted us back. So He came among us as one of us, like to us in all things but sin—he had arms and legs, hands and feet, a heart and a mind… and eyelashes. Jesus came to sinners, to the afflicted, to the poor, and stood eye to eye with them and said: “Your sins are forgiven you.” And by His Cross, as man he stood eyelash to eyelash with God on our behalf and said, “Father, forgive them,” and as God could respond, “It is accomplished,” that is, our peace with God was restored.

And this is the Good News that the Apostles were sent to preach, as ambassadors for Christ, that “God the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of His Son, has reconciled himself to the world, and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins.” And for the last two thousand years, the Church has brought God’s pardon and peace to us sinners, in the sacrament of baptism where the stain of original sin is washed clean, and in the sacrament of reconciliation, where the priest, speaking as Christ, says to us, “I absolve you of your sins.”

God wants nothing more than to hold us and say, “I love you.” May He grant us the grace not to squirm, but to coo with delight, and nuzzle the nose of our Father.

Four Ways of Speaking

Philosophy and theology deal with thick, heavy, dense subjects. It’s hard enough half the time to understand the question being asked, let alone the answer you get: “What is being? What is nature? What is the nature of being? What is essence of nature? What is the essence of God’s nature? Is existence itself God’s nature?” I’m guessing some of you went cross-eyed and passed out briefly mid-way through that series of questions. Hope you didn’t hit your head on anything. Point is: this stuff is hard.

Some people have a talent for engaging these topics in an easy and sensible way… and some do not. In reading different thinkers over the years, I’ve developed a theory:

There are four ways of communicating:

1. Speaking simply on simple matters. This is what most of our speech is like most of the time. Simple declarative statements: “She pushed me,” “God is good,” “That’s my coat,” or “Daniel Tosh isn’t funny.” No brain-busting concepts or unintelligible jargon.

2. Speaking complexly on simple matters. Here, though, we move to a level where we’re still not dealing with brain-busting concepts, but people for some reason feel the need to gussy it up; it’s the linguistic equivalent of wearing a tuxedo to a tailgate party. You’d find this exemplified by college sophomores:

Student: “Professor, can you elucidate for those of us currently present what precisely was the major precipitating factor for the conflict in question?”
Professor: “Do you mean, ‘How did the war start?’”

A more amusing example is found in this video, where Stephen Fry plays a bombastic barber.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J691coIfFvs

3. Speaking complexly on complex matters. Now we reach the level I was initially talking about. We’re dealing with brain-busting concepts, and for many it takes a boatload of special terms, words borrowed from other languages, and circumlocutions (i.e. “my father’s parents’ other son” instead of “my uncle”) to try to get the point across. For example:

“For the very early ancient Israelites, their Weltanschauung entailed a monolatric cosmology in which other deities were recognized while only one was honored with cultic worship.”

Now, there are simpler ways to say this (“The Israelites at first believed in a world where many gods existed, but they worshipped only one”), but they wouldn’t quite capture the content in the same way. It’s no crime to write or speak this way; most of us don’t have the ability to go beyond it. But some do….

4. Speaking simply on complex matters. This level is reserved for those true geniuses who are able to speak about difficult topics in a way that’s easy to understand without leaving out anything essential. Here are some of my favorite examples:
“Our hearts were made for you, O Lord, and they are restless until they rest in thee.” St. Augustine captures the essence of human desire and God as the fulfillment of that desire in one simple and beautiful sentence.

“We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.” C.S. Lewis here deftly points to a truth our politicians would do well to consider.

(I can’t leave out this example from Lewis, since it’s apropos to our subject: “Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.”)

"When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything." There are about 10 billion G.K. Chesterton quotes I could have chosen… so, yeah, I think we need a few more:

“To say that everybody is responsible means that nobody is responsible.”

“To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.”

"Why be something to everybody when you can be everything to somebody?" (on motherhood)

Anyway, you get the point, I hope. Be thankful when you come across those gifted people who are able to be so clear. They sure can make life easier.

You, Yes You, Are a Philosopher

I think for many people, the entry in their own mental dictionary for the term “philosophy” is something like this:

Philosophy (/fəˈläsəfē/):
1) a relatively useless undergraduate major populated by people who think they’re better than everyone else and whose personal hygiene leaves much to be desired, and who will most likely end up getting me a clean fork at a restaurant someday;
2) a relatively useless intellectual discipline where people use words to try to trick you into thinking whatever they want you to, or to split hairs and argue about things that don’t matter (see: sophistry).

I propose to you that your definition needs adjustment.

I propose that you, dear reader, are a philosopher and don’t realize it.

Have you ever used any of the following phrases:

--That’s not fair!
--How do you know?
--That doesn’t make sense.
--What is that?

Congratulations, you’re doing philosophy!

Each of these represents a different branch of philosophy.

“That’s not fair!” When we feel we’ve been treated unfairly, we’re assuming that we ought to be treated fairly, and that there is such a thing as fairness in the first place. It leads us to ask the question: what is fair? What do I owe other people? What do they owe me? What is justice? This is, in essence, the branch of philosophy known as ethics (from Greek ethos meaning “moral character”). We may not all use phrases like “categorical imperative” or “in medio virtus stat”, but every four-year old who’s had a toy taken from them, every person passed up for a promotion because the other guy golfs with the boss, in that moment becomes an ethicist.

“How do you know?” Every person wants to know the truth about things; not only that, they want to know how they can know the truth. How do we know things with any certainty? This is the branch of philosophy called epistemology (from the Greek episteme meaning “knowledge”). Any time you read the newspaper and try to sort out facts from opinions; any time you read anything from a statement of church doctrine to the results of a scientific study and wonder how we can know that; any time you do this, you’re engaged in epistemology—even if you aren’t using fancy phrases like “logical positivism” or “tabula rasa.”

“That doesn’t make sense.” Human beings are reasoning creatures. We recognize that our reason is governed by certain rules or truisms or axioms that are the very foundation of our ability to think. For example: a thing cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect. If someone told you that they were both alive and not alive at the same time, you’d rightly say to them, “That’s nonsense.” Or, to borrow an example from Monty Python: All fish live in water. The mackerel is a fish. Therefore, the mackerel lives in water. The first two statements lead to the conclusion in the third statement. They do not lead to the conclusion that trout live in trees, or that if you buy sushi it will not rain, or that your wife doesn’t love you anymore. These are some basic uses of logic (from the Greek logos meaning “reason”). We may not all use specific terms like “fallacy of composition,” “major premise,” or “enthymeme,” but EVERBODY uses logic itself, and when they don’t, it only leads to trouble.

“What is that?” To ask this question is to invite the response: “This is X.” To say, “This is X” is to say, “This thing is something which has the nature of X, which can be identified by X.” The answer to the question makes a huge difference. “Oh, it’s a copperhead snake!” vs. “Oh, it’s a huge pile of cash!” This is one of the most basic questions we can ask about anything: what is the nature of this thing, and what is it like? What is it really like, beyond the nature we see? This is metaphysics (from the Greek meta “after, beyond” and physis “nature”), quite possibly the deepest of the philosophical branches because it is the most basic. We may not all use categories like “substance” or “accident,” or make distinctions between a thing’s essence and its existence like the professionals do, but we engage in this sort of thinking every day.

Now, as the fake dictionary entry above pointed out, there are people who abuse the philosophical disciplines. They use them to make arguments to please their listeners, persuade others to do what they want, or to ingratiate themselves to those in power, and not to seek the truth. These people Socrates called Sophists, and he despised them. There are an awful lot of Sophists running around in the world today, and we need to be on our guard against them. We need the right tools to do so.

Philosophy was born out of people making statements like the ones above and thinking about them in greater depth. They wanted to know what was true in life and what wasn't, in the hopes that it might help them to lead a good life and be happy. Philosophy at its linguistic root is “the love of wisdom,” or “wisdom, sought lovingly.” It is the pursuit of truth in its various forms and functions. It is something we all do. And if we’re going to do it well, it helps to be taught about it. If we’re going to be taught about it, it helps to have a teacher. If we want a teacher, someone has to go to school for it. That’s what I’m doing here at DSPT: preparing to make my own infinitesimally small contribution toward helping the world to think clearly.