So I felt the need to rant a little bit and I figured some of the stuff here might be useful for people on the blogs (I can dream at least).  

So I’m a PhD student in Philosophy and so I teach intro classes to students at a major public university. I take classes and teach one so the school gives me a free education and some money. It’s not a bad gig, really. However, it’s amazing the difference just a few years makes from being a college student to being a “professional” college student. Also, I don’t do the fluffy kinda navel gazing most people think of philosophy. I do logic, philosophy of artificial intelligence, and moral psychology. (This is all said earlier in a blog, but it’s worth restating) 

Right now I’m teaching a course where my students have to take their own views, state them in some coherent form and then defend them. This isn’t as easy as one would think and with that in mind, my latest rant is regarding certain logically fallacies and poor arguments overall. In fact, many of my student’s argue like a forum post reads.

So here are things I see in student’s writings and in forum posts that annoy me:

Explanation: a good explanation or presentation of your position involves two parts. Yes, two. One, you need to actually explain the principles of your view (the premises of your argument). This shouldn’t be a shocker. The second part is the oft overlooked. You then need to provide a justification for those premises! YES! You can have any old view you like, but you better well provide me a damn good reason for why you think them! Look, I can start out with saying “well, if the sky is purple, then I’m a puppydog” and that’s fine. But you can’t expect me to think what you’re saying is RIGHT or TRUE or SOUND (in the case of an entire argument) unless you JUSTIFY IT. Now, I love me some RPGs and Strategy games, and I could say “these games are the best, this game is of that type, therefore that game is the best” and it’s a valid argument! But I can’t expect you to actually BUY it or believe it until I give you some justification for it! Simply put, everyone has an opinion and can plug in any premises they want into an argument. However, you can’t expect people to accept them without SOME sort of justification. I can say “the sky is blue” because I can justify it by pointing at the sky and going “FUCKING LOOK”. So yeah, everyone can think what they like, but if you get into a discussion, be able to justify your view. Nothing’s worse than someone going “MASTER CHIEF IS THE BEST BECAUSE HE IS THE BEST” or   “WELL, THAT”S MY FUCKING OPINION MAN”. It gets us nowhere.

strawmanning/uncharitibility: This is a fallacy in logic. It’s also pretty damn clear why it’s bad. Strawmanning is when a person does not actually argue against a person’s actual view, but rather builds a fake view that is much easier to rip apart (and does so). Basically, it gets its name because you’re not fighting a real person, you’re fighting a fake straw man (or target dummy). Now you may have a GREAT argument against that fake person, but it’s not the REAL target. For instance, in a recent podcast Brad mentioned that developers don’t lead off on PCs. He clearly cleared up his point by saying that it was a descriptive claim, not a normative one (it’s a what is claim, not a what should be claim). However, in the forum, he was attacked by someone claiming that Brad’s view was “developers should never lead on the PC”. Now, we won’t get into how good an argument the person had, but what’s important is that no matter how incredible it is, that person is not attacking brad. He’s strawmanning Brad with a crappy view. This idea of strawmanning should be pretty obvious. You can’t claim victory if you didn’t actually wound the actual person. I can’t beat up a punching bag and claim the heavyweight title.

So what do you do to fix this problem? Well, a few things. First, make damn sure you’re actually listening to what the person said and attack that view. But, you may ask, how am I supposed to make sure it’s the right view? Glad you asked! Sometimes a view is so fucking shitty or confused that there is NO way that person meant what they said, or it could be so disjointed you can’t tell which of 3 different things they meant. This is where the concept of charity comes in. Instead of just picking the easy one, or the one the person may have said, we do the CHARITABLE thing and take the BEST POSSIBLE INTERPRETATION as the target. If you do this, if you take the BEST POSSIBLE VIEW THEY COULD HAVE, you’re sure to kill any weaker version too. This should make sense. If you can kill the best possible view, you can kill a weaker one. If you can punch through 10 boards, you can punch through 1.

But why care about being charitable? Well, for a lot of reasons. First, arguments are like protagonists, they’re only as powerful as their enemy. Your view/argument is only as good as the counterargument (opposition argument) it can beat. Beating up a strawman is easy, and my argument doesn’t have to be good to do it. But if I can take Brad’s view, make it look fucking awesome, AND STILL WIN?! Then my argument is fucking great.

Second, we’re a community and we’re all people here, so show some goddamn respect. You wouldn’t want someone to intentionally misinterpret your argument as shitty as possible. You would want them to make it even better! If you really believe in your view, then you should be willing to go the extra mile and give it a real chance.

Third, you look like a dumbass when you get their view wrong and so by going with the best possible interpretation (the charitable one), they’re going to either a) agree that that’s their view or b)shut the fuck up and pretend it was because you did a better job than they did.

Finally, and most importantly, we have these forums because we want debate and discussion. Strawmanning doesn’t help, it only hurts. A real discussion takes listening, charity, and good arguments.

To finish up, I have one more thing. There’s a fallacy called “ad hominem.” It’s latin for “to the man”. It’s when you don’t actually attack the view, but the person behind it. An example would be “Global warming isn’t true, the people who say it is are all anti-business hippies”. The fact that all scientists (I uses to be one) are all anti-business hippies plays NO role WHATSOEVER in the truth of global warming. The same goes for games. Certain things are true beyond who told you them. Even if Hitler said that the sky was blue, THE SKY WOULD BE BLUE. Also, just because someone likes a game and you don’t, that doesn’t mean they’re an asshole. They may be an asshole, but that has nothing to do with the games they like (but rather with their asshol-ish tendencies). (well, actually they may be an asshole and like games that assholes like, but the fact they like a certain game doesn’t make them an asshole).

So remember kids, be charitable, don’t strawman, don’t attack the person but the view, and let’s get some nice discussion going. Furthermore, if you’re not willing to address the view and insist on attacking the person, you should post to another site. The people here pour their heart into this and want to be met on even ground, it’s not too hard to do these little things to make that possible.

I come to video games, video game reviews, and internet discussion with a slightly odd bent. I’m a PhD student in philosophy. Now, this isn’t the philosophy you see in the book stores next to the astrology, self help, or wicca books. I specialize in logic (among other things). Now, logic is a tad different from the common usage. I don’t sit around doing Sudoku all day. Logic is actually the formal study of arguments and argument forms. This means that a logician isn’t just some really nerdy guy who kicks ass in chess (I suck at it). It’s actually someone who studies what arguments are, how they work, WHY they work, and, most useful here, what is actually going on when we use them.

The reason I bring all this up, is that I want to try to pass on some useful information for people about arguments. My goal here is to help everyone understand a little bit more about what makes a good argument different from a bad one, hopefully resulting in better/clearer discussions on the forums. Also, by the end, people will be able to correctly point out where someone's argument went wrong, yell at them for it, and then rip them a new one with a witty riposte through the wonders of logic. Also you get to drop sweet terms like "ad hominem" "modus ponens" and "argument ad absurdem".

So where do we start? The most important place for any logician: an argument.

Now an argument isn’t simply disagreement. See here for a great example: Monty Python

An argument is made up of a collection of one or more premises followed by a single conclusion. For example:

P1. Socrates is a man.

P2. All men are mortal.

C. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

This argument has two premises followed by a single conclusion.

Now, the number of premises doesn’t have a limit, you only need 1 but you can have as many as you like. For example:

P1. It is raining

C. therefore, it is raining

Tada, not so tough. Just remember though, that an argument needs to have a conclusion too. This, for example, isn’t an argument:

P1. If it’s raining, then I’ll get wet

P2. It’s raining

Now, clearly there’s no conclusion, though we’re left to draw it ourselves. This, as stated isn’t an argument. However, people can often imply both premises and conclusions in regular speech. In those cases we usually fill in the blank ourselves. Usually being the right word, cause while we’re all fairly smart here in the GB community, sometimes people have really crazy thoughts that simply don’t flow. (We'll return to this later)

This gets us to the interesting parts.

Validity and Soundness: the bread and butter of logic.

These two ideas are what really matters in logic and to everyone/anyone who uses arguments. They also have technical sides to them different from the average use. Like so:

Validity: an ARGUMENT (and ONLY and argument) is valid when the truth of the conclusion follows necessarily from the truth of the premises.

This is a mouthful, but it’s pretty intuitive. Let me unpack it:

1) An argument as a whole is valid. A premise isn’t valid, nor is a conclusion valid. Premises and conclusions are True or False.

2) When an argument is valid, it means that when all your premises are true (EVERY ONE OF EM!) the conclusion HAS TO BE VALID.

3) This is important! WHEN ALL THE PREMISES ARE TRUE THE CONCLUSION MUST BE TRUE!

So lets go back over my examples:

P1 Socrates is a man

P2 All men are mortal

C Socrates is mortal

Well, if P1 is true and P2 is true. There’s just absolutely no way C can be false. So it’s valid!

P1. It is raining

C. therefore, it is raining

Hey, if P1 is true, C must be true. They’re the same damn thing! Obviously it’s valid!

Getting the hang of this? Good, it’s pretty simple stuff.

Here’s the tricky part though. An argument does not ACTUALLY have to be true to be valid. It’s only IF the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. For example:

P1 If I had a million dollars, I wouldn’t have to tutor kids

P2 I have a million dollars

C I don’t have to tutor kids

Now, this is valid. If P1 and P2 are true, then C MUST follow. There’s no way around it! At the same time, I (a grad student in philosophy), clearly don't have a million dollars.

This is the important lesson. Validity only cares about one thing: when ALL the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. When this is the case, it’s valid. When it’s not, it’s invalid!

So if there’s ever a time when all the premises are true and the conclusion false, it’s invalid!
Keep in mind, it's pretty easy to be valid, it's doesn't mean anything about being actually true or correct or anything!

So what about the actual truth of our claims? That’s soundness.

An argument is sound when an argument is valid, and the premises are ACTUALLY true in the real world!

Since we already have validity down, I won’t walk you through this. But you get the idea. If you know your argument is valid, look to see if ALL the premises are really true. If so, then you’ve got a sound argument.

So let’s finish this with a quick review.

An argument is made up of premises and a conclusion.

An argument is valid if and only if when all the premises are true, the conclusion MUST be true.

An argument is sound if and only if it’s valid and the premises are ACTUALLY true.

So check back for another logic lesson soon. We’ll get into more complicated stuff like fallacies, good argument forms, special types of arguments, and some really important stuff on how truth works.

In the meantime, try to use this stuff to make sure your arguments are valid and (hopefully) sound. 

So with only 5 days till I hear back from schools, it's pretty obvious that the stress is built up. I'm waiting to hear back from Florida State University, UC Riverside, and University of British Columbia. I'm on the waitlist at all of these places, and if I get in, then it's PhD time for me! Also, I'm going to school for philosophy.
 
Is there anyone else who's going through grad school admission processes?