Respect seems a simple thing, but sadly notable by its absence these days. But then my generation haven't exactly made a good account of themselves in other areas, so... maybe rudeness and blue hair will cure global warming... Who knows.

Respect seems a simple thing, but sadly notable by its absence these days. — Isaac

I've had to work at being less confrontational and more respectful as I've gotten older. As you can see from some of my posts, I still have a ways to go. The forum has helped in that regard.

maybe rudeness and blue hair will cure global warming — Isaac

Okay Boomer

Okay Boomer — Srap Tasmaner

I had to look that up! Does that make it self-fulfilling?

It seems you're only looking at history through the lens of one who already agrees with the points you want to make. From that perspective, of course history looks like it supports your position, it's confirmation bias, not compelling argument.

Sure, you're making an argument. This detraction can be leveled at all forms of argument and so it seems to be trivial. "You're only looking at the entailments of that proposition that support your argument," "you're only brining up analogies that support your argument," "you're only discussing x scientific model that supports your argument," etc. etc.

Again, it makes an argument from analogy. I fail to see how it makes a good one; other than by it coming to a conclusion you already happen to prefer. As a step in a rational argument it doesn't seem to contain any data. "They used to do that with homosexuals" is an empty argument without your interlocutor already agreeing that homosexuals and trans people share the same status... and if they agreed on that, there'd be no argument in the first place. You couldn't argue against the incarceration of child molesters by saying "they used to do that to heretics". It was wrong to do it to heretics, it's right to do it to child molesters. The argument is in the case, not the history.

You fail to see how it's a good analogy because you think trans people are more similar to child molesters than to homosexuals, or because you disagree with the shift to wider acceptance of homosexuality? Or are you just making the point that its possible for someone to disagree with any analogy, regardless of its merits and that it's also possible to make bad analogies? (This seems trivial to me). Or is it that arguments from analogy are inherently flawed? (This just seems wrong)

I don't see the broader point here. It's possible to write bad proofs and it's possible to believe that good proofs don't work. This objection seems like it applies to any form of argumentation.


Anyhow, I was merely trying to give some examples where the history of ideas may relevant, not even making an argument. Frequentism jumped to my mind simply because I think Bernoulli's Fallacy is a good book, even if I don't buy all the arguments. It uses the historical rise of frequentism to both order and elucidate its mathematical arguments. Thus, you're not just seeing that "people thought about x differently in the past," but you're seeing both a mathematical argument for why frequentism doesn't work in all cases paired with examples of where prior thinkers went wrong and how that has influenced current dogma.

You can't argue anything if your opponents are 'firmly entrenched dogmatists'. I suspect they would disagree and therein lies the problem.

You can say the same thing about a syllogism. That someone could reply to "all men are mortal, Socrates is a man..." with "you can't know that all men are mortal!" doesn't amount to much, no?

Why is an argument from the history of an idea particularly bad?

In other words, we take our best guesses as to the goals of the people we're interacting with into account when we model their behaviour all the time, language is no different — Isaac

There's something David Foster Wallace said about the appeal of fiction, and it's kinda heartbreaking since he ended up taking his own life: because we get to peek into their minds or otherwise get an explanation for why they do what they do, fictional characters are understandable, and it's pleasurable to think (or pretend) that real people might be understandable. What I don't think he said out loud is, It gives you the idea, or the vain hope, that someone might understand you.

I've been reading a lecture of James on "The Sentiment of Rationality." He makes a point, from physiology, that the pleasurable feeling of calm and order we associate with understanding and rationality is not just that of unimpeded thought and action -- which he emphasizes elsewhere -- but release under tension. It's impedance followed by free flow. Solving a problem, grasping an idea you struggled with, and so on, all obvious examples.

Together those tell a story about the friction in a conversation and why we engage in it anyway, but something's missing, right? We have communication in the first place because the cost of listening to you is lower than the cost of finding out everything for myself, you know, assuming you know something it would be helpful for me to know.

Talk is cheap. Listening is pretty cheap, but if you don't know anything I don't, it's not cheap enough, unless it's also a way to do something else, strengthen social ties, manage status, that kind of stuff.

Now we can say that we engage in the kind of conversations we do here because we're in the habit of sharing our knowledge and learning from each other, and that all adds up to a communal process of learning. Swell. It's just that in a given conversation, I won't know at first if you're any help, to me or to the project. So now there's this whole process of exploring your ideas just to find out if it's worth exploring your ideas. That's a lot of friction, and it's starting to look like a pretty heavy investment on a speculative basis. I'm gambling with my time and energy when I talk to you.

Anything up to here you'd disagree with?

Next steps then would be all about managing risk, reducing the time until I know whether the investment was a bust, improving the reliability of my guesses about whether I'm going to learn anything or otherwise aid the social project, and so on. And the rules of discussion would be about risk management. Make sense?

I had to look that up! — Isaac

Did you use Yahoo! or did you get someone to help you ask Siri?

Or are you just making the point that its possible for someone to disagree with any analogy, regardless of its merits and that it's also possible to make bad analogies? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Not quite. It's merits are contingent on the interlocutor already agreeing with the point it's supposed to be demonstrating to them. What's the point in demonstrating to someone a point they already agree with?

For a logical argument to have persuasive force it is only necessary that I agree with the rules of logic. I could not, of course, but it's not a big ask.

For an argument from analogy to have persuasive force, like the one you presented, I'd need to already agree that the situations are, indeed, analogous. If I agree that, there's little left to persuade me of. The same cannot be said for rational argument in general. It's not the case that merely by accepting rules of rational thought I've basically agreed with your argument.

you're not just seeing that "people thought about x differently in the past," but you're seeing both a mathematical argument for why frequentism doesn't work in all cases paired with examples of where prior thinkers went wrong and how that has influenced current dogma. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, examples from history can be illustrative, add colour to an argument. They are not the argument itself, that's the point being made here. The post which gave rise to this OP was nothing but history.

You can say the same thing about a syllogism. That someone could reply to "all men are mortal, Socrates is a man..." with "you can't know that all men are mortal!" doesn't amount to much, no?

Why is an argument from the history of an idea particularly bad? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Again, as above. The commitments you require of an interlocutor for an argument from syllogism to work are little more than the law of identity. Those required for an argument from history to work are so close to agreeing with the proposed position anyway as to render it little more than window-dressing.

Anything up to here you'd disagree with? — Srap Tasmaner

No, nothing.

Make sense? — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, totally. It's why I think the issue you raise here is so important, and I don't even think it necessary to shy away from commentary of the approach of different posters. If anything, it's necessary. For a project like this to work, there has to be some mutual trust, since, as you say, you can't know if what I say is going to valuable until after you've invested the time to extract it, read it, and understand it - no small investment. I might be interacting simply to get a rise, to declare my group membership, to alleviate boredom... all three. None of which are of any use to you (unless you want to be in my group, of course, in which case me showing you which beliefs are required as membership tokens is useful).

To achieve all this needs a web of trust, like with peer-review. To build that web requires some interrogation of intent. I just don't see a way around that.

So yeah, adherence to the rules of rational discourse are a really good guide, partly because they themselves are a cost outlay, they show good intent. Most people have more important concerns, even when interacting online, than the edification of their peers, so for me to actually adhere to the rules to that end, rather than simply use the structure to declare/cement/advance my social status, is a cost to me (as it is a risk for you to trust that that's what I'm doing).

For different people, that cost is going to be greater than for others, depending on their circumstances, what the need from this place (or any other discussion) - hence, again, some psychologising is inevitable. .

What's problematic is that there's a tension between the Gricean requirement to interpret charitably, and the need to build and encourage this web of trust, especially on a anonymous platform of short post format such as this one. If every interpretation maximises charity, then there's little incentive to risk the cost of an honest transaction (for someone seeking one of those many other goals), intent needs to be interrogated.

As is probably patently obvious, to the annoyance of many a peer, I favour a fairly robust interrogation, after which we can be fairly sure the exchange is one of mutual benefit. Others, prefer the risks, but then I'm lucky in that I've little to lose from such an approach

Did you use Yahoo! or did you get someone to help you ask Siri? — Srap Tasmaner

No, of course not. I Facebook-chatted a Snapchat question to my Tik-Tok followers, who replied by re-Tweeting an Instagram to my Whatsapp - you know...the usual way.

So yeah, adherence to the rules of rational discourse are a really good guide, partly because they themselves are a cost outlay, they show good intent. — Isaac

Good one! Should have thought of that.

(Heard a fascinating theory along these lines of the origin of organized religion: there have to be burdens, like dietary restrictions and so on, as bona fides of your seriousness about being a member of the group; and these are only necessary because human communities had grown large enough that you might not know right off whether someone is one of us or one of them. Religion then steps in as a kind of passport, offering proof of group membership by having these up-front costs. A shared religion indicates a level of trustworthiness, so then religion can even cross borders and enable the maintenance of trading ties and so on. But again, it has to cost you something more than professing membership or no one will think it a reliable indicator of your trustworthiness. Another way of handling the cheapness of talk there.)

One other thing that occurs me, that comes off the idea of the sentiment of rationality being the feeling of release under tension, is that a lot of what we actually do is more rhetoric than logic, in this sense: if you think of storytelling as the art of withholding information -- so that the audience feels anticipation and is eagerly engaged, anxious for the next reveal -- then we make our little step-by-step points so that the audience will keep getting a little hit of the sentiment of rationality. I put it that way because it's like the way casinos take all your money by giving you occasional trivial payouts. Part of that manipulation, I've always heard, is that the win must come at irregular and unpredictable intervals -- by building in uncertainty about whether the next spin will be the next win, tension and anticipation can be maintained, but no one can maintain that state of tension indefinitely so you have to allow some occasional release.

Around here, that's something like uncertainty about where the steps are headed. When do I find out what the point of all this is? When do we get to the part I'm going to balk at? When do you admit what you're really driving at? And you can see the impatience building all the time; having suffered through a handful of points, feeling like their grasp of the issue is thoroughly established by the hurdles they've cleared so far, people start wanting to get to the big showdown. Part of what's going wrong here might be that step-by-step argument is too predictable, and while taking each step might be in itself satisfying, the process as a whole doesn't have the same hypnotic effect that gambling and storytelling do.

What does get people engaged is the surprise conclusion. You agreed to A and B, and voila! A and B entail C! Didn't see that coming did you! Then you get a big rush of rationality, which you'll have to struggle to shake off before you can examine whether A and B really do entail C. (And you'll hope they really do, because that was cool!) The thing about religion I described near the top, that hit me that way, as an awfully clever idea (which I'm not sure I conveyed very well).

Facebook — Isaac

Facebook. ::facepalm::

Heard a fascinating theory along these lines of the origin of organized religion: there have to be burdens, like dietary restrictions and so on, as bona fides of your seriousness about being a member of the group; and these are only necessary because human communities had grown large enough that you might not know right off whether someone is one of us or one of them. Religion then steps in as a kind of passport, offering proof of group membership by having these up-front costs. A shared religion indicates a level of trustworthiness, so then religion can even cross borders and enable the maintenance of trading ties and so on. But again, it has to cost you something more than professing membership or no one will think it a reliable indicator of your trustworthiness. Another way of handling the cheapness of talk there. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, that is fascinating, I'd never heard that before, but it's similar to an issue I've worked quite closely on in group belief dynamics where some small contingent of the token beliefs (the membership badges, if you like) will be costly in themselves to profess. The idea is the same - a test of commitment. The difference (in my model) between that and the example you gave, is that I model group membership tokens as dynamic rather than institutionalised. They're more like starling murmurations, each group member trying to predict which ones will work by copying the others but those others are just made up of people doing exactly the same thing, everyone copying everyone else. In small groups this leads to conservatism with occasional paradigm shifts. In large groups, chaos factors in and it can lead to tokens which no-one either intended, nor necessarily even benefits from.

Well, that's the theory anyway... never finished testing it.

One other thing that occurs me, that comes off the idea of the sentiment of rationality being the feeling of release under tension, is that a lot of what we actually do is more rhetoric than logic, in this sense: if you think of storytelling as the art of withholding information -- so that the audience feels anticipation and is eagerly engaged, anxious for the next reveal -- then we make our little step-by-step points so that the audience will keep getting a little hit of the sentiment of rationality. — Srap Tasmaner

Nice. I could see it as a kind of meta-narrative to soften the blow of having some fundamental belief shaken. If it's part of a known story where the whole point is the 'big reveal', then we're less likely to reject it because we know that narrative - being-surprised-by-the-plot-twist. It's a way, perhaps, of dealing with the necessary tension by putting it in a familiar story where the tension is released. A musician friend of mine talks this way about music too - tension in discordancy with a predictable (but only just) release in eventual harmony.

If we're set up right, it's actually quite enjoyable to have one's foundational beliefs shaken. But it comes back down to intent. The story form can be abused too, the set-up-and-reveal nothing but a sham to draw you in to a theory which has no A, B therefore (surprising) C structure at all. And drawn in we will be...

It's interesting you mention rhetoric and storytelling because it struck me only from your mentioning it how much the effects of my doing that (I do it a lot) are read differently in different settings. This is my first (and only) foray into social media, and outside of this forum my social circles ( in terms of who I might make arguments to) are very limited. My wife (also an academic), my colleagues (all academics), and my clients (don't argue back!). It's weird having the wider diversity here and reading the different responses - weird in a good way. But response to rhetoric is one of the differences I've noticed. It's not always taken for what it is, often getting mixed up with the actual argument. I think maybe because when talking to people who know the basic form of what you're about to say, the rhetoric is more obvious. It stands out as embellishment because the substance is mostly already known (apart, of course, from the 'big reveal' at the end).

But then again, it come back down to intent still. If people don't trust my intent, they're not going to bother sifting through the rhetoric. They're not going to see it as a well-meaning way of embellishing the story. and they'd be right to because if I don't trust them, it's as likely to be a definition of social boundaries as it is a benevolent adornment. We do also argue to persuade, and sometimes the success of that persuasion is more important than the method.

Which comes back to that tension between charitable interpretation and 'enforcing' the rules to build a web of trust within which we can feel comfortable with these rhetorical embellishments and tension-building lead-ups. That's very much how I saw your OP, a (tentative) suspension of charity to enforce an absolutely indispensable rule. I'd like to see more of it, but it didn't go down well did it?

For a logical argument to have persuasive force it is only necessary that I agree with the rules of logic.

No, this is profoundly misunderstanding what logic alone can do for us. Logic just tells you that, if the premises of an argument are true, then the conclusion follows. Logic generally can't tell you anything about whether the premises are true. Most arguments are claims about states of affairs/matters of fact. You can't argue anything "just from logic," except (maybe) "a priori truths," that can be grasped from pure deduction alone (which plenty of people don't think exists).

"All historical arguments are good arguments.
Wayfarer's argument, which sparked this thread, is a historical argument.
Thus, the Wayfarer's post is a good argument," is deductively valid.

And there isn't one set of "the rules of logic," for people to agree to either. There is a fairly well agreed upon set principles for classical logic, and there are the widely accepted "laws of thought," but these don't allow you to phrase many of the arguments people want to make (i.e. arguments about modality, quantifiers, etc.), nor does everyone agree on them. Mathematics has not proven deducible from logic to date, and so even proofs don't "only require that [you] agree to the rules of logic." Hence, either logical pluralism or logical nihilism is the norm, with some folks still holding out on the hope that some One True Logic reveals itself.


You can apply logic to parts of an inductive argument, but such an argument necessarily includes claims about past states of affairs/past observations. If I say "cutting taxes won't result in higher government revenues per the Laffer Curve, because we have seen 3 major tax cuts since 1980 and each time revenues have fallen instead of increasing," that is of course an argument relying on historical fact. In many claims about the world, I would argue that deduction's primary role is to ground the statistical methods used to analyze past observations. People can always argue that past observations are in error, fake, poorly defined, etc.

You can put historical arguments into the form of a deductively valid syllogisms. It doesn't mean they will be convincing or true.


To get back to the original point here: , do you guys think most science textbooks waste the student's time by going through the history of how a theory came to be developed?

Every in-depth treatment of GR/SR, quantum mechanics, or thermodynamics I've read starts with the history of the ideas in play. A survey of thermodynamics normally starts with Carnort, Clausius, and mechanism-based explanations of thermodynamics in terms of work. Most treatments will discuss the once widely held, but now thoroughly debunked caloric theory of heat; what the theory was and which experiments ultimately led to the rejection of the theory and the positing of a new one.

Likewise, almost every review of relativity of any depth starts with a summary of Newtonian physics and discussions of the theory of luminiferous aether.

I've always thought that these reviews were done so that the student could follow the development of an position. Knowing which alternatives to a theory have been considered and rejected are key to understanding a theory because, especially for a novice, the dominant theory of the day is always going to look undetermined by the evidence they are aware of. It's also true that knowing why a given element was added to a theory gives you much better insight into how to think about that part of the theory. If some constant was added simply because the mathematics for some project wasn't working out, it's good to know it.

For example, if the a multiverse version of eternal cosmic inflation becomes the dominant view in cosmology, I'd argue that it'd be good for students to know that the driving reason behind that theory's adoption was concerns over the Fine-Tuning Problem. Why? Because some people might find FTP totally untroubling and so mignt question why some seemingly "philosophical," question led science to accept a vast landscape of unobservable phenomena. Likewise, mechanism was rejected because Newton's gravity acted at a distance; knowing this is relevant when Einstein's theory replaces Newton's because the historical reason for rejecting mechanism goes away and locality is seemingly back on the table.

What would your preferred method of presentation be? Just presenting currently held facts and models? Talking about just experimental results and how they support or undermine a theory, without any reference the the history behind the experiment?

I don't think this works. We collect and categorize data based upon our current theories. The historical context of an experiment determines how it is preformed and how it is understood.

Plus, old "debunked," theories have a habit of coming back in new forms. Wilzek's "Lightness of Being," spends considerable time look at old aether theories and why they were rejected because he wants to revive aspects of the theory in a new format, to explain space-time as a sort of aether, a metric field. Explaining the history lets the reader see how only certain parts of the old aether theory were inconsistent with experimental findings.

BTW, I'll agree that not all background is useful. I don't think freshmen neuroscience majors should have to learn about Freud, even thought they often do in some cursory fashion. However, I also don't think you can satisfactorily explain introductory quantum mechanics or SR/GR without going into the history of Newtonian physics. Often, new theories are defined in terms of old ones.


The modern conception of physicalism was defined in terms of popular dualist and idealist theories this way. Defining physicalism in terms of causal closure and the denial of any suis generis forces makes no sense if it isn't explained in the context of its competitors.

do you guys think most science textbooks waste the student's time by going through the history of how a theory came to be developed? — Count Timothy von Icarus

No. My issue wasn't really with the use of history per se, but with how it was or wasn't connected to other points being made, which would hold for any sort of obiter dicta in a post. I left in the detail that it was a specifically historical point as an opening for defending a different view of what sorts of connections between points are required in an argument.

We do also argue to persuade, and sometimes the success of that persuasion is more important than the method. — Isaac

The general view is that there's good persuasion, which follows the rules of logic, and bad persuasion, which doesn't.

I'd rather switch that around and say logic is partially descriptive of at least some the types of persuasion we find good, or think usually work, etc.

That there are valid arguments that aren't persuasive is obvious: if you don't accept a premise, doesn't matter that the conclusion is properly derived. (Multiple ways not to accept premises too.) So persuasive arguments seem to be a subset of valid arguments. But it's not like that because a lot of arguments aren't deductive. So really it's a matter of the two overlapping.

But I still think persuasion is primary, and what we see with non-persuasive but valid arguments is escape, a derivative use of tech that originates as a type of persuasion. It's similar to how I've come to think there is a core use of language in the simple, direct account of what I know that you don't, basic narrative, but that form can be repurposed to lie, and, well, everything else.

No, this is profoundly misunderstanding what logic alone can do for us. Logic just tells you that, if the premises of an argument are true, then the conclusion follows. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Exactly. It has persuasive force. If we just swap out all the premises for letters and produce a long, non-obvious, logical argument that, say , if A> B and B>C then A>C, that has persuasive force. I can look at that and think "yes, that's right, A is greater than C in those circumstances" I've been persuaded by the presentation. The longer an more complex the argument, more likely it is to draw out entailment from believing one logical move on other logical moves. I'm persuaded by the argument that I must accept the entailment, regardless of whether I accept the premises.

My point is that history alone has no such force since it is inevitably selective. Thousands of things happened in the past, so pointing to A and B as precursors of C doesn't do anything because the argument would be in your choice of A and B not in the mere fact of their near contemporaneity to C.

there isn't one set of "the rules of logic," — Count Timothy von Icarus

I didn't claim there was, but, that's beside the point. The point is about the level of, and likelihood of, commitment to shared foundational beliefs. It doesn't matter which brand of logic is used. In arguments it's mostly a kind of informal 'habits of thought' type of mash-up anyway. The point is that in discourse at this level, I'm quite likely to have a very strong overlap with you regarding my belief in those rules. I'm very likely to have the same set and to be strongly committed to them. As such, arguments which are based on them are likely to be persuasive (same goes for a fundamental set of empirical beliefs too such as basic physics, real-world objects etc). Arguments from analogy, or from history are not of this kind. they rely on a shared narrative about historical events of classification which is so close to that of the proponent that agreement on them is usually only the case in people who already agree with the proposition anyway (as I showed with your homosexual/trans example).

If I say "cutting taxes won't result in higher government revenues per the Laffer Curve, because we have seen 3 major tax cuts since 1980 and each time revenues have fallen instead of increasing," that is of course an argument relying on historical fact. — Count Timothy von Icarus

All facts are historical in that sense. This is not the type of argument the post was written about, it's not saying "we can't use any evidence that occurred in the past" that would be an absurdly uncharitable interpretation. What idiot is going to claim that? This, @Srap Tasmaner, might serve as an example of the costs of engagement. Why am I having to expend time countering an interpretation of an argument that a five year old could see was wrong? Why hasn't that interpretation been silently ruled out by all parties in this thread on the grounds that we're not stupid? We shouldn't be here.

I've always thought that these reviews were done so that the student could follow the development of an position. Knowing which alternatives to a theory have been considered and rejected are key to understanding a theory because, especially for a novice, the dominant theory of the day is always going to look undetermined by the evidence they are aware of. It's also true that knowing why a given element was added to a theory gives you much better insight into how to think about that part of the theory. If some constant was added simply because the mathematics for some project wasn't working out, it's good to know it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is all about theory, not history. The question of why a model was abandoned, or why a constant was added is someone's opinion. Someone's theory. Again, from your perspective (you agree with the textbook - or trust the institution) that all seems really solid, but it's not the history that's done that, it's your belief in the authority of the person presenting it. The theory might have been discarded for reasons other than those the textbook claims, the constant might have been added for more rigorous reasons in someone's view but others disagreed (the ones writing the text book). As I said with your other examples, if you already agree that theory A ought have been replaced by theory B, then you're going to be reassured by a historical narrative about how theory B was only supported for so long because of dogmatism. If, however, you disagree, you're just going to also disagree with the historical narrative. It has no persuasive force on it's own because too many competing narratives are easily available. There's little to no reason to accept any particular one.

And to emphasise, this is not the case with arguments relying of basic rules of thought and empirical observation. There are not, in those cases, a myriad of narratives to feely choose from. One might well argue against a tenet of modern physics by claiming maths is flawed, but one would be rightly wary of the commitments that would entail. Not so with historical analysis. I can easily say "No, things did not happen that way" and I'm committed to absolutely nothing else as a result. It's a free pass to disagree.

The general view is that there's good persuasion, which follows the rules of logic, and bad persuasion, which doesn't.

I'd rather switch that around and say logic is partially descriptive of at least some the types of persuasion we find good, or think usually work, etc. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, I think I'd agree (but maybe for different reasons?). Any activity which loses sight of life as a whole becomes unmoored and I don't think that's terribly healthy. We might well engage here in some fairly effete topics, but they're never entirely disconnected from life and as such carry some (if not much) potential consequence. It will be the case, from time-to-time, that persuading someone of the merits of your position is more important than the method by which you do so.

In those cases I don't see the goodness or badness of the persuasion being determined by the method, but by the circumstance.

That said, I wouldn't want to discard the importance of the fact that these are edge cases and in the main, the better arguments are those which follow a set of rules for how to get from A to B and are persuasive because of their adherence to those rules. We have come to trust, as habits, the fact that those rules tend to yield good answers (less surprising models) and it's that track record which makes arguments following those rules persuasive.

In philosophy (small 'p') I suppose the focus ought be on those rules and the arguments using them. Ironically, in Psychology, I'm most interested in why the other sorts of arguments are persuasive. An emotional appeal, for example, simply doesn't have anything like as good a track record of yielding useful models, so why on earth would we find such arguments persuasive? It doesn't seem, on first blush, to fit with the self-perpetuating modelling relationship theory of cognition I also work with. So the interesting thing for me is marrying the two (plus things like groups membership tokens, fear,...all the other reasons we're persuaded by an argument that aren't those rational rules of thought). The 'why' of it can be explained in terms of evolutionary psychology (were one to be so crass as to attempt such a thing), but the 'how' of it is what interests me, what steps are taken, the mental process of becoming convinced by something...

I seem to have arrived at the same place as you. I want to know why Wayfarer (standing in as merely an example of the trope here) thought the argument persuasive. I want to know what mental steps he imagined the interlocutor taking resulting from the information given. To use your example...

A: We should take the car.
B: Train.
A: Why should we take the train?
B: Trains have been carrying passengers traveling for both work and for pleasure since the mid-19th century. They were once the primary form of transportation, but with the advent of gas-powered automobiles in the early 20th century and the modern highway system, particularly in the wake of the Second World War, they were largely displaced by cars, buses, and trucks. — Srap Tasmaner

...what follows in A's mind? What's the imagined next step?

Or the now archetypal example
A; "Pierce is not an idealist"
B: "He used to be thought of as an idealist, but then Russell re-branded him"
...then...what? What's the step that A is supposed to take next to become persuaded Pierce is, in fact, and idealist? I've genuinely no (charitable*) idea .

My issue wasn't really with the use of history per se, but with how it was or wasn't connected to other points being made, which would hold for any sort of obiter dicta in a post. I left in the detail that it was a specifically historical point as an opening for defending a different view of what sorts of connections between points are required in an argument.

Seems fair to me. Although that doesn't seem like a "type" of argument vis-á-vis the history of ideas except in the sense that it falls into the type of "bad," as respects having a bad connection between its premises and conclusions, or simply being a non-sequitor, rather than an argument.

But that makes perfect sense. There are cases where the history of an idea is quite relevant and others where it isn't, and you can present history that isn't even relevant to the idea at hand.

I think something like SR/GR is a good example because it's a theory that is very much defined by the failures of other contemporary theories, and since there were other consistent models that were arguably rejected for contingent reasons (e.g., if we allow that objects grow and shrink depending on their velocity, we can avoid some of Einstein's conclusions).

I'll just add that when people have been discussing a set of topics for a very long time, it seems like seemingly tangential points are brought up because of some broader, and at times inappropriate context. This seems inevitable; you see it in old letters between patristic theologians as well, where some footnote has to explain why x is remotely relevant to some prior point because of some previous exchange two years earlier. I will agree that this sort of thing is entirely unhelpful for anyone following along.

This, @Srap Tasmaner, might serve as an example of the costs of engagement. Why am I having to expend time countering an interpretation of an argument that a five year old could see was wrong? Why hasn't that interpretation been silently ruled out by all parties in this thread on the grounds that we're not stupid? We shouldn't be here.

lol, I in no way interpreted the original post as ruling out arguments from historical examples in general. Hence why I only replied to Srap Tasmaner re: the examples of frequentism and the common practice of explaining the historical conditions surrounding the emergences of scientific theories.

My response to you was what it was because you have repeatedly made the claim that the reason arguments involving history aren't valid is because "you can select just the history that proves your point." My point was that this can be claimed against all inductive arguments- that, you are using an argument re: analogies and the history of ideas that generalizes.

Take your latest restatement:

My point is that history alone has no such force since it is inevitably selective. Thousands of things happened in the past, so pointing to A and B as precursors of C doesn't do anything because the argument would be in your choice of A and B not in the mere fact of their near contemporaneity to C.

You made the same argument for why historical analogies, in general, don't work. My response shifted because you appear to be making the wider claim that arguments from historical example do not work because cherry picking is possible (otherwise, why are historical examples related to the history of an idea and those used in analogies somehow unacceptably vulnerable to cherry picking?)

How does your argument in the quote above not apply to my example about the Laffer Curve? You could absolutely claim that I am cherry picking. My dataset has only three examples, all from the same country, in roughly the same era. However, taxes have been cut across human history, and presumably sometimes revenue went up after taxes were cut. Arguments about cherry picking are arguments against the truth of a premise; they are arguments about the applicability of the data. That cherry picking is possible is not a good argument against the use of any historical examples, nor is it specific to one type of historical example.

Do you see how I could have taken things like: "thousands of things happened in the past, so pointing to A and B as precursors of C doesn't do anything," as arguments against induction in general?

If I was accused of cherry picking re: the Laffer Curve, I could counter that the effects of tax cuts in the US, in the modern era, are more relevant than the wider population of all tax cuts across history. This would be to say that the Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts are more closely analogous vis-a-vis a consideration of what tax policy should be in the US today.

And to emphasise, this is not the case with arguments relying of basic rules of thought and empirical observation. There are not, in those cases, a myriad of narratives to feely choose from. One might well argue against a tenet of modern physics by claiming maths is flawed, but one would be rightly wary of the commitments that would entail. Not so with historical analysis. I can easily say "No, things did not happen that way" and I'm committed to absolutely nothing else as a result. It's a free pass to disagree.

But you argue right above that I have no good reason to trust a physics textbook as to why certain theories were adopted because:

Again, from your perspective (you agree with the textbook - or trust the institution) that all seems really solid, but it's not the history that's done that, it's your belief in the authority of the person presenting it.

What is different here? Presumably I trust an institution because they have a track record of producing truthful information. People can, and do, fake their data. Governments produce fake economic figures. And even if we're not talking about fake data, it is completely possible to cherry pick any empirical data, whether it be historical case studies for an IR paper or which medical studies you include in a meta-analysis.

So, we cannot trust any sort of historical narrative because the person presenting it might be lying or cherry picking, and yet for some reason we can trust some empirical data that other people present to us because...

If, as you say, "the question of why a model was abandoned, or why a constant was added is someone's opinion," and unverifiable, based soley on authority, then science is in a very rough place...




You also seemed to be making the much stronger claims that:

>Argument from analogy is not a good form of argument because anyone can disagree with whether the analogy fits.

For an argument from analogy to have persuasive force, like the one you presented, I'd need to already agree that the situations are, indeed, analogous...

[Analogies'] merits are contingent on the interlocutor already agreeing with the point it's supposed to be demonstrating to them. What's the point in demonstrating to someone a point they already agree with?

In an analogical argument, "x is to y as a is to b..." is a premise. It was not clear to me how your point that: "your interlocuter must agree that your premises are true for them to accept the argument," is unique to analogies. This is what I meant by: "the same critique can be leveled any argument."

Further, the claim that someone must "already agree with you," for an analogy to be successful goes too far. People can, and often are, unaware of all the entailments of premises they accept as true. A good analogy can be persuasive and informative if you're audience is listening in good faith.


>That some other types of argument (I'm not sure which), aren't vulnerable to this sort of disagreement over premises? so long as a person accepts the rules of logic.

For an argument from analogy to have persuasive force, like the one you presented, I'd need to already agree that the situations are, indeed, analogous... For a logical argument to have persuasive force it is only necessary that I agree with the rules of logic. I could not, of course, but it's not a big ask.

Can you see my confusion? What arguments aside from those using allegedly a priori, self-evident premises, are not vulnerable to having the premises challenged?

Exactly. It has persuasive force. If we just swap out all the premises for letters and produce a long, non-obvious, logical argument that, say , if A> B and B>C then A>C, that has persuasive force. I can look at that and think "yes, that's right, A is greater than C in those circumstances" I've been persuaded by the presentation.

Only if the premises are true. Let's look:

"If 3 is greater than 9 and 9 is greater than 100 then 3 is greater than 100."

Convinced?

The longer an more complex the argument, more likely it is to draw out entailment from believing one logical move on other logical moves.

The longer and more complex an argument the less feasible it is for a human being to ever work through its validity, develop a truth table, etc. Hence why we rely on computers so heavily with long logical statements. In general, we want to compress our logical statements down as much as possible or put them in CNF for easy computation.

I'm persuaded by the argument that I must accept the entailment, regardless of whether I accept the premises.

This is just a baffling statement and I'm going to assume you meant something else by it, like "an argument can be valid without being sound." When an argument is valid, it does not mean that any entailments it enumerates are true or should be accepted.

>If it is Monday, then Grover Cleavland is the President
>It is Monday
>Thus, Gover Cleaveland is the President (proposed entailment/conclusion)

This is a logically valid argument.

>If it rained last night, the lawn will be wet.
>The lawn is wet.
>Thus, it must have rained last night. (proposed entailment/conclusion)

This is a logically valid argument... — Count Timothy von Icarus

Ummm. Look again?

I edited it to phrase it better and not leave it open to interpretations of just affirming the consequent.

The argument still commits the formal fallacy of affirming the consequent.

lol, you responded at the same time I was editing.

Yeah, it's not a good example for the point, since it's affirming the consequent the way many people might read it, with "must" as if instead of iff. The point is that you can have an argument of the form:

If and only if a then b.
b
Thus, a.

This is not affirming the consequent. But it's a shit example of that because "will," and "must" can be taken as if or iff so I'll change it.

:up:

My response to you was what it was because you have repeatedly made the claim that the reason arguments involving history aren't valid is because "you can select just the history that proves your point." My point was that this can be claimed against all inductive arguments — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. And I've countered that point several times now, but you're still stuck at the beginning. It's not the same because not all methods are so open, not all methods are so narrowly shared. There are entailments resulting from denying a common form of logic, or an empirical fact that are uncomfortable and which are not necessary when denying some interpretation of history.

Simply put if I say, "the ball is under the cup" and then I show you the ball you could still deny my theory, but you'd have to bring in a mass of other commitments about the possibility of illusion, not trusting your own eyes, ... Commitments you wouldn't like.

Likewise if you agree that 1+1=2, then I show you how that entails 2+2=4, you'd have to bring in a shed load of uncomfortable beliefs in order to deny that.

But if I say, "history shows that strong leaders always end up in wars", you could just say "no it doesn't" and walk away with virtually no additional commitments required to maintain that belief. History is so open to interpretation that virtually any theory can be held without issue. Not so with empirical facts, not so with informal logic (not so with formal logic either but that wasn't my point).

I'm sure to someone with your... how do I put this politely... confident way of thinking, the Facts™ of history probably are all written in stone and no doubt all these alternative interpretations are more of those 'conspiracy theories' your priesthood of disinformation experts are working so hard to cull. I can see how the argument I'm trying to make just won't mesh with some mindsets. It may be an impasse we can't bridge.

I'm going to assume you meant something else by it, like "an argument can be valid without being sound. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm talking about neither soundness, nor validity, but persuasiveness. One can be persuaded of the soundness of an argument, or one can be persuaded of it's validity. It's irrelevant (to this topic) which. The topic here is the means of persuasion, the methods used to persuade. Above, you have tried to persuade me of the validity of an argument form. earlier you tried to persuade me of the soundness (or lack thereof). If I constructed a long logical proof, the manner of its exposition would determine, to an extent, whether I was persuaded by its validity. In your example above, my degree of trust in the CNF you mentioned would be at least partially determinate of whether I'm persuaded by the result. The means of persuasion are not the same as either validity or soundness, they are orthogonal to both. The question being addressed here is how it is intended that certain forms of argument from history are supposed to persuade, the manner in which is is supposed they are to work.

Yes. And I've countered that point several times now, but you're still stuck at the beginning. It's not the same because not all methods are so open, not all methods are so narrowly shared. There are entailments resulting from denying a common form of logic, or an empirical fact that are uncomfortable and which are not necessary when denying some interpretation of history.

Simply put if I say, "the ball is under the cup" and then I show you the ball you could still deny my theory, but you'd have to bring in a mass of other commitments about the possibility of illusion, not trusting your own eyes, ... Commitments you wouldn't like.

Sure. And denying that we can trust the standard fare of physics textbooks re: the origins of relativity or thermodynamics also comes with a lot of commitments. You'd have to assume a lot of people were "in" on a misrepresentation and that they had all coordinated to keep to the same narrative across a wide array of texts, including falsifying and circulating the papers of the original people involved.

The "ball under the cup," example is rather lacking. Many phenomena explored by contemporary physics can only be observed using fantastically expensive equipment. Findings aren't deducible from mathematics. If you find results in contemporary physics credible you are either did the experiment yourself or you are relying on the authority of others and processes like peer review there too.

Your average person is in a much better position to vet if a science textbook is telling them the truth about the history of quantum mechanics than they are to go out and observe entanglement and test Bell's inequalities. When was the last time you read something about cosmology and fired up your giant radar telescope to verify it?

I do actually agree with you in a limited way though. There is a real difference with some aspects of history, where the number of people who are motivated to develop their own interpretations is larger, the degrees of freedom for interpretation greater, the barrier to entry in advancing one's own theories (somewhat) credibly is much lower, and the ulterior/political motivations for advancing some arguments much greater. I don't buy that this is any reason to assume total nescience is at all rational though.

I'm sure to someone with your... how do I put this politely... confident way of thinking, the Facts™ of history probably are all written in stone and no doubt all these alternative interpretations are more of those 'conspiracy theories' your priesthood of disinformation experts are working so hard to cull. I can see how the argument I'm trying to make just won't mesh with some mindsets. It may be an impasse we can't bridge.

:rofl:


Maybe you could write a book on this topic and lay out your arguments systematically? Texts in science and philosophy almost universally review such history, and they're wasting a lot of time, right? So, you could radically change pedagogy for the better.

The only downside would be that neither you (nor I, for my small role in spurring you on to the project) could ever get credit for the idea. The fact of our contributions would be lost to the shifting sands of history, unable to be verified.

denying that we can trust the standard fare of physics textbooks re: the origins of relativity or thermodynamics also comes with a lot of commitments. You'd have to assume a lot of people were "in" on a misrepresentation and that they had all coordinated to keep to the same narrative across a wide array of texts, including falsifying and circulating the papers of the original people involved. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What? Why would people have to be 'in' on anything? Are you honestly having this much trouble understanding the concept of disagreement among epistemic peers? Some theories are popular, others aren't. Is that such a challenging concept for you?

Your average person is in a much better position to vet if a science textbook is telling them the truth about the history of quantum mechanics than they are to go out and observe entanglement and test Bell's inequalities. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Really, how?

I don't buy that this is any reason to assume total nescience is at all rational though. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Again, my interrogation is about the supposed mechanism of persuasiveness. I haven't even mentioned nescience.

The fact of our contributions would be lost to the shifting sands of history, unable to be verified. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You're confusing empirical facts for narratives about the motivations, socio-political causes, zeitgeist,... As above, empirical facts are quite easy to persuade others of since we generally share means of verification and trust. Narratives, motivations, sociology, politics... Those are not things we generally share methods of verification for, so the persuasiveness of arguments using those 'facts' is considerably less (for those who don't already broadly agree). So an argument which employs nothing else is a curiosity with regards to how the proponent intended it to work.

What? Why would people have to be 'in' on anything? Are you honestly having this much trouble understanding the concept of disagreement among epistemic peers? Some theories are popular, others aren't. Is that such a challenging concept for you?

That's a pretty weak strawman. We're not talking about disagreements about scientific theories. What I wrote:

I've always thought that these reviews [of the origins of scientific theories] were done so that the student could follow the development of a position. Knowing which alternatives to a theory have been considered and rejected are key to understanding a theory because, especially for a novice, the dominant theory of the day is always going to look undetermined by the evidence they are aware of. It's also true that knowing why a given element was added to a theory gives you much better insight into how to think about that part of the theory. If some constant was added simply because the mathematics for some project wasn't working out, it's good to know it.

I've yet to come across any radically different versions of how thermodynamics, etc. were developed. Even books like Becker's "What is Real?" with a serious axe to grind still give the same essential outline for how QM developed.

But per your view, how can we actually know why a scientific theory was advanced or why others were rejected?

The question of why a model was abandoned, or why a constant was added is someone's opinion. Someone's theory. Again, from your perspective (you agree with the textbook - or trust the institution) that all seems really solid, but it's not the history that's done that, it's your belief in the authority of the person presenting it. The theory might have been discarded for reasons other than those the textbook claims, the constant might have been added for more rigorous reasons in someone's view but others disagreed (the ones writing the text book)

IDK, when Einstein says he added the Cosmological Constant to have his theory jive with the then widely held view that the universe was static I think that is a good reason to believe that is why Einstein added the Cosmological Constant.

Really, how?

The pioneers of quantum mechanics published papers throughout their lifetimes, conducted interviews, were taped during lectures, and wrote memoirs, all describing how the theory evolved. In many cases, their personal correspondences were made available after their death. Most of this is even free.

Now tell me where I can get access to a free particle accelerator and a Youtube on how to properly use it so I can observe particle physics findings first hand?

You're confusing empirical facts for narratives about the motivations, socio-political causes, zeitgeist,... As above, empirical facts are quite easy to persuade others of since we generally share means of verification .

Einstein added the Cosmological Constant to fit current models is an empirical fact. In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue is an empirical fact. The Catholic Church harassing advocates of heliocentrism is an empirical fact. People have had sensory experiences of those things and reported them.

Most facts we accept aren't easy to verify personally. You can read about chimpanzee behavior extensively, but how easy is it to go and study chimps in the wild? When was the last time you wanted to learn something and held a double-blind clinical study?

Do you replicate the experiments after you read a scientific paper? No. Then you're trusting the institution publishing it and its authors, right?

and trust

Plenty of people don't trust the scientific establishment. This cannot be a good criterion for justification.

Any activity which loses sight of life as a whole becomes unmoored and I don't think that's terribly healthy. — Isaac

That's more or less the idea. If logic stands above and apart from our practices, it hangs in the air. More later.

>If it is Monday, then Grover Cleavland is the President
>It is Monday
>Thus, Gover Cleaveland is the President (proposed entailment/conclusion)

This is a logically valid argument. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Given modus ponens as an inference rule. (And thus not a theorem.)

Actually constructing arguments requires some system of deduction, not just the definitions of the logical constants.