Rhetoric & Other Forms of Artificial Intelligence
David Longley
RHETORIC and OTHER FORMS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
'Rhetoric is the literary technology of persuasion, for
good or ill. It is the rallying point for advertisers,
trial lawyers, politicians, and debating teams.
Debating teams are promoted in schools as a spur to
effective language and incisive thought. They serve that
purpose, but only by setting the goal of persuasion
above the goal of truth. The debater's strength lies not
in intellectual curiosity nor in amenability to rational
persuasion by others, but in his skill in defending a
preconception come what may. His is a nefarious knack of
disregarding all the discrepancies while regarding every
crepancy.
The same skill, along with legal lore, is the strength
of the trial lawyer or barrister, and the strength also
of the successful politician, one or the other of which
careers the captain of the the debating team is clearly
destined for. Happily there are lawyers who will only
take on such cases as they deem to be just, and
politicians who will espouse only a case which is
righteous; but these scruples are not adjuncts of the
rhetorical pole, nor are they keys to success in the
legal or political profession.
When an electorate or a jury is the sway of a
demagogue's rhetoric, cold reason and the marshaling of
facts bear little promise in rebuttal. Marshaling more
rhetoric, then, in a contrary vein, we fight fire with
fire. Rhetoric is invaluable homeopathically in
withstanding its own assaults.
In scientific circles there is little demagogy to
combat, but rhetoric is sometimes of service even there;
for in an extremity it may happen that a scientist needs
more than a cold statement of his theory and his
evidence if he is ever to shake the stubborn and
mistaken preconceptions of some of his students, let
alone his dissident colleagues. But rhetoric in the
wrong scientist's hands can do disservice to science. It
can help him put his theory across for his reputation's
sake despite some shakiness in the evidence.
Rhetoric, then, is sometimes nefarious and sometimes
not. In its nefarious use it is the art or practice of
defending a proposition on grounds other than one's own
reasons for defending it. An auxiliary device is
innuendo. A 'referentially translucent' expression, as
Randal Marlin call it, is subtly ambiguous: it can be
taken as objectively stating a result of an action, and
it can be taken as accusing the agent of intending that
result. One of Marlin's examples is the headline 'Pope
Fouls Up Bar Mitzvah'. The Pope's arrival in town caused
a traffic jam that rendered the synagogue inaccessible
for the Bar Mitzvah; but the headline can be taken as
hinting unjustly of hostility on the Pope's part towards
Jews. It is an insidious device, effective in warping
unsuspecting minds while still adhering, in a sense, to
the verifiable.
Nefarious rhetoric is rife not only in tendentious
journalism, television commercials, courts of law,
Congress, political rallies, and the United Nations, but
also in homelier settings. In a New England town meeting
a citizen will describe in glowing terms the public
advantages which accrue from some proposed measure, when
what is at stake deep down has to do with his own
interest as proprietor, abutter, investor or contractor.
In such a case we do not cope with abuse by meeting
rhetoric with rhetoric, fire with fire, we just expose
the man's motives. What is important is to be alert to
what is going on, and not accept insincere argument at
face value. This much applies to the august and the
humble ones alike.
What I have been calling nefarious rhetoric recurs in a
rudimentary form also in impromptu discussions. Someone
harbors a prejudice or an article of faith or a vested
interest, and marshals ever more desperate and
threadbare arguments in defence of his position rather
than be swayed by reason or face the facts. Even more
often, perhaps, the deterrent is just stubborn pride:
reluctance to acknowledge error. Unscientific man is
beset by a deplorable desire to have been right. The
scientist is distinguished by a desire to BE right.
Rhetoric
QUINE (1990)
Quiddities: An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary
'The reason we cannot understand what a man means by
what he says without knowing a good deal about his
beliefs is this. In order to interpret verbal behaviour,
we must be able to tell when a speaker holds a sentence
he speaks to be true. But sentences are held to be true
partly because of what is believed, and partly because
of what the speaker means by his words. The problem of
interpretation therefore is the problem of abstracting
simultaneously the roles of belief and meaning from the
pattern of sentences to which a speaker subscribes over
time. The situation is like that in decision theory:
just as we cannot infer beliefs from choices without
also inferring desires, so we cannot decide what a man
means by what he says without at the same time
constructing a theory about what he believes.
The interpretation of verbal behaviour thus shows the
salient features of the explanation of behaviour
generally: we cannot profitably take the parts one by
one (the words and sentences), for it is only in the
context of the system (language) that their role can be
specified. When we turn to the task of interpreting the
pattern, we notice the need to find it in accord, within
limits, with the standards of rationality. In the case
of language, this is apparent, because understanding it
is TRANSLATING it into our own system of concepts. But
in fact the case is no different with beliefs, desires,
and actions.
The constitutive force in the realm of behaviour derives
from the need to view others, nearly enough, as like
ourselves. As long as it is behaviour and not something
else we want to explain and describe, we must warp the
evidence to fit this frame.'
Davidson (1980)
Psychology as Philosophy
ESSAYS ON ACTIONS AND EVENTS
In other words, when talking about someone else's 'belief-
system', and in the absence of any ostensive or otherwise
identifiable constraints - we can (and unfortunately, all too
frequently do) say anything we like!.
And - the reason is that within the ordinary vernacular of folk
psychology (from which almost all the 'philosophical' questions
arising in this newsgroup arise) there are some locutions which
inevitably lead to problems of a logical kind which are rightly
regarded as nothing more than lingusitic anomalies. Unfortunately
there are a large number of folk who resist this (in my view very
clear analysis) and prefer instead to think that the muddle is in
fact indicative of some as yet unsolved problem in the philosophy
of mind/AI.
Elsewhere, I have gone to great lengths to show how and where the
above occurs. Here is how the Kneales put it back in 1962..
'A language as a whole may be said to be intensional if it allows
for the designation of intensions where such designation is
essential, i.e. not eliminable by deflationary translation like
that from "It is true that-P" to "P". Obviously all the natural
languages of civilized peoples qualify for this title. And so
also does Lewis's symbolism, since it is a tacit convention of
his script that a sign occurring as the grammatical subject of
the predicate <> or as the object of the verb --{ shall be taken
to be a designation of what it ordinarily expresses: we noticed
earlier that there is a similar convention in ordinary English
about clauses which follow the verb 'say' but are not introduced
by 'that'. It is possible, however, to conceive languages in
which intensions can be expressed but never designated: these are
said to be extensional. The terminology is a little confusing,
because those who are familiar with the history of the words
naturally start by thinking of an intension as something
expressed and an extension as something designated; but if we are
to make use of the words in this context, we must free ourselves
from that association and think of an extension as being either
an individual, a class, or a truth value and of an intension as
being either an individual concept ( if this rather queer phrase
may be allowed), a propositional function, or a proposition. It
is possible, as we have seen, to have a rudimentary language in
which propositions can be expressed but nothing at all
designated. According to the definition given above, such a
language would be extensional. If it were enriched by functional
expressions and designations of individuals and classes, it would
still remain extensional. But if designations of propositions,
propositional functions, and individual concepts were added, it
would become intensional. In short, the difference is one in
respect of the types of entities which languages admit as
subjects of discourse, and an intensional language is essentially
more complicated than an extensional, since it allows both
expression and designation of that which an extensional language
would allow only expression.
In his article 'Uber Sinn und Bedeutung' Frege recognized clearly
the possibility of taking propositions as subjects of discourse,
but in his 'Begriffsschrift' and again in his 'Grundgesetze der
Arithmetik' he made no provision for this or any other feature of
intensional language. Presumably the reason for this omission was
that he saw no need of intensional language for for the
presentation of mathematics. In the first edition of 'Principia
Mathematica' Whitehead and Russell follow the same course. While
recognizing the possibility of intensional statements such as
'Socrates believed that his soul was immortal', they confine
their discussion for the most part to the characteristics of
extensional statements. But there appears in the
'Begriffsschrift' and again in the 'Principia Mathematica' a
logical principle
x=y -> (fx -> fy)
which seems at first sight to be inconsistent with the admission
of intensional statements. It is in effect the converse of
Leibniz's principle of the identity of indiscernibles, 'Eadem
sunt quorum unum potest substitui alteri salva veritate', and it
may perhaps be called the principle of the indiscernibility of
identicals. So far as we know, it has not been questioned even by
those philosophers who find Leibniz's assertion unplausible, yet
it seems to have extraordinary consequences. Let us suppose, for
example, that we substitute '12' for x, 'the sum of the third and
fourth prime numbers' for y, and 'the Pope knows that the number
of the apostles is .....' for f. Then we get a true statement for
x=y and another true statement for fx, but two applications of
the 'modus ponens' yield the conclusion 'The Pope knows that the
number of the apostles is the sum of the third and fourth prime
numbers', which, to say the least, is very doubtful. By similar
arguments we can prove paradoxes in the theory of modality, as
for example that any true statement of identity is necessarily
true. For the morning star is identical with the evening star and
the morning star satisfies the function expressed by the words '
it is necessary that the morning star is identical with....'.
Therefore, it seems, the evening star must also satisfy the
function, i.e. it is necessary that the morning star is identical
with the evening star.
How are we to deal with this awkward situation? In his 'Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus' (5.54) Wittgenstein asserts that one
propositional sign can occur in another only as an argument of a
truth-function. As it stands, this statement is clearly false,
since the propositional sign 'it will rain tomorrow' does not
appear as an argument of a truth-function in the sentence 'Brown
thinks that it will rain tomorrow'. But it may perhaps be taken
as as epigrammatic way of saying that every utterance made in an
intensional language can be translated without loss into an
extensional language. This Thesis of Extensionality, as it now
called, was adopted by Russell in the introduction to the second
edition of 'Principia Mathematica', published in 1925, and
defended at length by Carnap in his 'Logical Syntax of Language',
first published in 1934.'
W. Kneale and M. Kneale (1962,1988)
Problems of Intentionality -
The Philosophy of Logic After Frege
THE DEVELOPMENT OF LOGIC pp.603-605
For an elaboration, see:
http://www.uni-hamburg.de/~kriminol/TS/tskr.htm
--
David Longley
Oliver Sparrow
I can know the truth and wish you to know it too; and independently from this,
I can wish you to agree to do what I want. These independent dimensions
create a space, consultant-style, which I won't bother to sketch. The four
quadrants are, however:
I want to educate you AND I want you to agree to do what I want.
Science; and also idealised teaching.
I want to educate you AND you will damn' well do what I want.
Less idealised teaching: training in the military.
Rhetoric.
Johnnie! If you do that again I'll........
I can't be bothered to persuade you AND I want you to agree to do what I want.
Propaganda.
Advertising.
I can't be bothered to persuade you AND you will damn' well do what I want
Saddams, of various scales and flavours.
_________________________________________________
Oliver Sparrow
oh...@chatham.demon.co.uk
David Longley
In article <842218...@longley.demon.co.uk>
Da...@longley.demon.co.uk "David Longley" writes:
>
>'How are we to deal with this awkward situation? In his 'Tractatus
> propositional sign can occur in another only as an argument of a
> truth-function. As it stands, this statement is clearly false,
> since the propositional sign 'it will rain tomorrow' does not
> appear as an argument of a truth-function in the sentence 'Brown
> thinks that it will rain tomorrow'. But it may perhaps be taken
> as as epigrammatic way of saying that every utterance made in an
> intensional language can be translated without loss into an
> extensional language. This Thesis of Extensionality, as it now
> called, was adopted by Russell in the introduction to the second
> edition of 'Principia Mathematica', published in 1925, and
> defended at length by Carnap in his 'Logical Syntax of Language',
> first published in 1934.'
>
> W. Kneale and M. Kneale (1962,1988)
> Problems of Intentionality -
> The Philosophy of Logic After Frege
> THE DEVELOPMENT OF LOGIC pp.603-605
>
Alas, (again as I have probably said enough already on), Quine
and others have *argued* (persuasively to many) that this
goal of translation is very probably false - suggesting even more
strongly that the intensional idioms are indeed a pathological
set of linguistic entities which we whilst whilst serving no
useful purpose, do highlight where we might profitably focus our
research efforts with the objective of explicating what presently
remains unclear.
--
David Longley