San Diego Objectivist Study Group

I have the recurring habit of checking out too many books from the library, only to read too few of them before the due date. But during this particular weekend, I managed to finish reading a slim 129-page book entitled Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking, by D. Q. McInerny (Random House, 2004), which was surprisingly good. It was like appetizers, though. Now I feel like wanting the main course.

I would recommend it to Objectivists (especially as a review), but with some caveats. Although written by a classical philosopher, which is a big plus, as opposed to by some linguist-semanticist, it still has some major flaws from the Objectivist perspective. Below are my criticisms of the book. I jotted them down as I read it, so they somewhat have the structure of a dialog. Given these caveats, I would not rank the book on the same level as Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, but I still think it ranks up there among the better guidebooks. Besides, it is not often one finds among them a book about a subject so rarefied as logic. 

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To be cautious: What does he mean by “objective” and “intrinsic”?

-           Keep in mind while reading that what he means by “objective” is not the same as Objectivism’s “objective.” That which for him is the “objective order” is for Objectivists the intrinsic order. This is a fundamental difference between Aristotelians and Objectivists. [Unless stated otherwise, the comments below follow his usage.]

-           The converse is not true. His conception of values is indeed intrinsic; it is not at all objective in the Objectivist sense.

-           The clearest indication of difference is his view of “facts.” For him a particular fact may be either objective or else subjective. This follows directly from intrinsicism. For Objectivism, a fact, if it is a fact at all, is always objective, regardless of whether the referents are external or internal to the subject who apprehends the fact.

Unclear: Is he lumping both a headache and a centaur as subjective facts? (pp. 5, 9)
-           No, he is only saying a headache and an idea (either of “centaur” or of “headache”) are. 

Overgeneralized: are all statements of objective fact not open to argument? (p. 15)
-           Of course not, but he overgeneralizes when he states, “True statements of objective fact are not open to argument.” It would be more precise for him to have said that true statements of perceptible facts are not open to argument——for perception is evidence, requiring no proof/argument. Other statements of objective fact, those not directly perceivable, therefore do need to be argued. 

Inconsistent: Are evaluative statements (statements of value) objective or not? (pp. 15, 42)
-           Well, he quibbles in the transition from the first mention to the second. For Objectivists, they are objective.

Ambiguous: Can a statement of value be true by argument and not just by authority? (pp. 42, 72-73, 85)
-           Yes, by argumentation also, but he seems to suggest that all evaluative statements are just mere opinions. Not until page 85 does he then define what he actually means by “opinion.” So, he ambiguously leads the readers to believe that statements of value cannot be argued but only be accepted on the authority of experts.
-           Furthermore, although he initially writes, “If I want an evaluative statement to be accepted, I must argue for it” (p. 15); he never extends support to this statement and thus leaves the readers hanging. 

Plainly wrong: Are evaluations forever contested? (pp. 72-73)
-           Moreover, when statements of value are used as premises in an argument, the conclusion derived, he says, does not have the same logical strength as one using statements of fact for premises. This, according to him, is so because evaluations are subjective and can be forever contested. This is incorrect from an Objectivist perspective. Evaluations can be conclusive when an objective standard is found. For example, if an objective standard for good health is discovered, a doctor can evaluate a patient for disease; his diagnosis and prescription may be contested but not forever contested, for the patient will either have the disease or not. The doctor’s evaluations are objective because other doctors, using the same standard, can arrive at the same conclusion. So, the issue is not about evaluations being subjective, but about evaluations being subject to objective standards. It is objectivity once removed. 

Sidetracked: What is the primary purpose of logical arguments? (pp. 84-88)
-           Although the book’s subtitle says it right, this part of the book gradually loses focus on the primary aim of using arguments, which is to discover truth by thinking. Toward the end of the section, the author claims that its purpose is to communicate to an audience. This is simply tangential, because it has to be remembered that communicating to others is only a secondary aim, the primary one being that of reasoning. That is to say, before one can communicate, one must first have reasoned toward truth. Fortunately, by the next part, the author recovers his focus. 

Editorially misplaced: Is common sense a positive or a negative in logical thinking? (pp. 98-99)
-           The paragraph says it is a positive, but the section itself is placed in the part about illogical thinking. 

Philosophically erroneous: Do final causes apply to all kinds of activity? (pp. 35-36)
-           No. Being a classical philosopher, McInerny passes down the same ancient mistake of universalizing final causes to all kinds of activity. In the contemporary era, the opposite mistake is made, that of denying the recognition of final causes as such. The correction is to recognize the proper context of this important principle. Final causes apply only to man-made activities——to what humans do and what they make. 

Philosophically erroneous: Can all things be measured or quantified? (pp. 117-119)
-           Yes. Again, being a classical philosopher, he takes the scholastic position that that which is immaterial cannot be measured, e.g., love, beauty, justice, freedom, etc. However, if something is of the objective order, that is, of this intrinsic world, which includes the immaterial, then it can be measured. The distinction, known to Aristotle but either forgotten or unknown to the scholastics, is that their measurements do not take cardinal quantities but ordinal ones. (It is not known to me whether Ayn Rand’s answer that “love can be measured, and how!” was arrived at independently, or whether she got it from studying Aristotle’s works directly——bypassing the Thomistic/scholastic interpreters. This would be an interesting area for historical research.)

Rhetorically ambiguous: Whose responsibility is it to prove something? (pp. 124-125)
-           The fallacy really is an appeal to ignorance (argumentum ad ignorantiam), but he writes it as if it is an appeal to the ability or inability to prove or disprove. This is not the case; rather, the issue is about whether something exists. The onus of proof is on the one who asserts existence. A positive assertion is a claim that something exists, that its existence is a fact. If you assert positively, say, that God exists, you have to prove it. No one else needs to disprove your existential claim; no one needs to prove nonexistence. (By contrast, and for review, a negative assertion is a claim about absence. See John Venn’s diagrams.)

Unclear: Is he saying that reality is really “gray”? (pp. 128-129)
-           No, he is only saying it hypothetically. His point is to try to order one’s subjective thoughts as much as possible to correspond to the objective facts. And “if” the world is gray, then think and say “gray.” He is following the primacy of existence to a hypothetical extreme. For elsewhere he eloquently writes: “Gray can exist as gray only because there are the distinct alternatives of black and white. That you might find yourself at times in a situation in which you see no clear alternatives does not mean, objectively considered, that there are no clear alternatives. It simply means that you do not see them. Don’t project your subjective state of uncertainty upon the world at large and claim objective status for it.” (p. 31) 

==== useful definitions and characteristics ==== 

[transient] “Selective skepticism is merely a matter of reserving judgment until we have sufficient information at hand to judge responsibly.” (91d)
[permanent] “The extreme skeptic proclaims baldly that there is no truth.” (92a)
[permanent] “The moderate skeptic is prepared to concede that truth may exist, but he maintains that if it does, the human mind is incapable of attaining it.” (92b) 

[honest] “An agnostic is someone who maintains that he lacks enough knowledge regarding a particular issue to be able to make a definite judgment about it.” (92d)
[dishonest] “Evasive agnosticism is the attitude that attempts to pass off vincible ignorance as if it were invincible.” (93b) 

“A cynic is someone who makes emphatically negative estimates without sufficient evidence.” (93c)
“A naïve optimist is someone who makes emphatically positive estimates without sufficient evidence.” (93d) 

[healthy] active-mindedness: the conscious placement of a limit on “the scope of [one’s] inquiry, for that is a practical necessity which avoids wasted effort.” (95a)
[unhealthy] narrow-mindedness: the refusal “to consider certain alternatives only because they do not meet [one’s] prejudiced assumptions about what is and is not worth pursuing.” (95b)
[unhealthy] open-mindedness: to be indiscriminately open to everything and to be noncommital on issues that demand commitment. (95c) 

opinion: an unsupported statement, which one is free to take or leave at face value. (p. 85a)
premise: a statement in an argument that offers evidence or support for a conclusion. (pp. 47, 109)
evidence: a fact expressible in a statement serving as premise in the context of an argument in order to support a conclusion. (p. 82)
assumption: a statement taken by someone to be true without his being certain of its truth. (p. 111)
expert: an authority in a specific field of science. (p. 116) 

Consistent reasoning is not the same as logical reasoning. The difference is not over method but over content. Logical reasoning requires not only proper techniques but also true principles. (96d-97d) 

The ignorance of logical thinking in the public mind has caused a distortion in the language to the extent that the typical man on the street confuses his quarreling as a form of arguing. One is not the other. “The object of argument is to get at the truth. The object of quarreling is to get at other people.” (97d-98a) 

==== bad versus good ==== 

[incorrect] love: willing the good for others. (108c)
[correct] love: an emotional response to a being of irreplaceable value. (AR TVOS) 

[invalid] values are intrinsic. (pp. xi, 113, 123)
[valid] values are objective. (AR CTUI)