Fallacies in symbolic form

On this occasion I wanted to just give a few examples of argumentative fallacies and how they would look on symbolic form. Since symbols can cut through any haze, these can be used whenever possible to get clarity on what tricky arguments one is facing. Definitely not everything is here, but only some that have caught my eye. (Hope my symbols display well on your browser)

The Post Hoc

If something happens first (P) and something next (Q) one could conclude that

P→Q

4	P	From above
5	Q	From above
6	P→Q	?

Correct

4	P	From above
5	Q	From above
6	P˄Q	Conj 4,5

The most we can say is that something happens and that something else happens. 

P→Q might be True, but it cannot be logically derived from what we have here.

Appeal to Ignorance

You cannot prove you are not a communist, therefore you are one.

1	P→~Q	Premise (enthymeme. If you had proof, then you would not be...)
2	~P	P (You cannot prove…)
3	~~Q	From negating the antecedent 1,2
4	Q	Double negation 3 (Therefore you are a…)

Hmm...1 and 2 makes this one doubly wrong.

What about the ex silentio argument which is nonfallacious and looks similar?

1	Q→R	Premise  (If so-and-so was True, there would be evidence)
2	~R	Premise  (We've looked for the evidence and there's none)
3	~Q	MT 1,2 (So-and-so isn't True)[This one is valid]

Poisoning the well

These examples are taken from Madsen Pirie's How to Win Every Argument. Second lines are paraphrases. The first two seem to focus on the one making the proposal while the third on the proposal itself.

Everyone except an idiot knows…

Only an idiot doesn't know…

∀x(~Kx→Ix)

∀x(~Ix→Kx)

∀x(Ix ˅ Kx)

∀x~(~Ix ˄ ~Kx)

 ~∃x (~Ix ˄ ~Kx)

Only those who are inadequate now advocate…

Everyone except the inadequate do not advocate…

∀x(Ax→Ix)

∀x(~Ix→~Ax)

∀x(Ix ˅ ~Ax)

∀x~(~Ix ˄ Ax)

~∃x (~Ix ˄ Ax)

Choice in education is only a device…

The only thing that is choice in education is a device…

∀x(Cx→Dx)

∀x(~Dx→~Cx)

∀x(~Cx ˅ Dx)

∀x~(Cx ˄ ~Dx)

~∃x (Cx ˄ ~Dx)

The Material Conditional and its truth values

... from that thing which is false what truth can come?

Ecclesiasticus 34:4

Time for something of more substance.

(Hope that the symbols display well on your browser)

The truth table for the material conditional is:

p	q	p ⊃  q
T	T	T
T	F	F
F	T	T
F	F	T

One can readily understand the first line and even the second line after a moment's reflection, but why does the conditional yield a True value for False antecedents? What follows are my attempts to make sense of it.

First try:

Eminent logicians agree that these are the values, so we are justified on relying on their opinion. This being logic however, we demand proof, so:

Second try:

"P then Q" is shorthand for ~P v Q or alternatively ~(P ^~Q). If one works out the truth table for these, the result is our starting table. However, still, at a gut level feels wrong: Out of Falseness, Truth?

Third try:

If one takes a step back, it makes sense that by starting with Falseness anything goes. One can draw anything from a False starting point, for instance "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit".  From here one can go anywhere, to Mt Doom, there, and back again. Now, more seriously:

Fourth try:

Going line by line one can see: first, having the condition of the antecedent met, we arrive at the consequent; that is the least we can expect of of any self-respecting conditional. Second, we don't want having the antecedent met, and not getting the consequent; the second line covers that. The last two lines makes clear that it doesn't care, it has no provision, when the antecedent is False.  The consequent may be True or it may be False, it makes no judgment other than let it pass. Parallely:

Fifth try:

So what is actually True for a conditional when its antecedent is False? Not the conclusion, but the expresion itself, the whole conditional. Having the antecedent False doesn't spring its magic , P then Q, leaving it aloof and unblemished ("You go do your nonsense; I'll keep to myself"). From another viewpoint:

Sixth try:

Russell said that for any two propositions p and q  either p⊃q or q⊃p. If you try a few in your head you'll see he's right in some sense. I think there's some controversy here.

Seventh try:

If you're still not convinced maybe you're right after all. Let's look at the alternatives and see if there' something better. Alternatives have been offered to fix the conditional and I'll look at just two of them here: giving the Truth table other values to better reflect natural language conditionals and getting into modal.

Other values:

There's an interesting article by Fulda⁰  which analyzes different possible truth values  for the conditional making it seven sets in all+ old material conditional. For my part implication #4 looked at first like the best candidate since its gives a False values for the False antecedents. It quickly becomes apparent that adopting it would bring even graver problems . Here's its Truth table:

p	q	p ⊃  q (4)
T	T	T
T	F	F
F	T	F
F	F	F

For starters, the third line apparently makes the fallacies of denying the antecedent and affirming the consequent disappear. Then, we'd get some funky cause and effect relationships:

I aced Logic last year. The grape harvest in France shot up that same year. Then, If I ace Logic, the grape harvest will shoot up.

If next year the harvest looks chancy, I can picture France's grape growers in session drafting a letter earnestly asking me to hit the books and save their livelihood. I claim no such power.

What if we change back the third line?

p	q	p ⊃ q (2)
T	T	T
T	F	F
F	T	T
F	F	F

If I shoot a man through the heart, then I'll kill him on the spot.

If I were to shoot him  and he dies for sure; so far so good.

If I shoot him through and he survives, that cannot be.

If I abstain from from shooting and he dies anyway; ok (maybe he had a medical condition)

It is not the case that I don't shoot him, and he doesn't die; that cannot be. Wait! Someone else could shoot him down for me. So having the fourth line all False is absurd.

Let's see if flipping the Truth value with the third helps:

p	q	p ⊃ q (3)
T	T	T
T	F	F
F	T	F
F	F	T

The third line says that it can't be that he can continue living even when I abstain from shooting.  The table is tantamount to affirming that I have power of life and death over him and no one else. Once more, that's a bit much beyond me.

Going Modal:

Some philosophers were bothered at the time by the paradoxes material conditional (which are a different can of worms) or by how it could be strengthened. Notably, Lewis came up with the modern strict conditional and opened the field of modal logic. Are strict conditionals better?

According to Stanford¹ paradoxes, now modal, popped up anyway and according to Girle²  "none of these [material] 'paradoxes' are problematic in and of themselves".

Also according to Girle³, to some, the material conditional appears to be no problem for math, so why bother?

Judging from Konyndyk⁴ what modal logicians regard as strict Truths,  it appears as if their field is very restricted especially since it doesn't include the usual suspect (ie physical necessity). Since logical Truths are included and material conditionals are tautologous, It appears to me that necessary Truths support the material rather than step away from it. I need someone shed some light on this point.

According to Barker⁵, a) Lewis overstated his case since Russell never drew anything in the Principia Mathematica from a False antecedent, ie he only drew Truth from Truth ; and b) Russell used the word 'implication' because he couldn't come up with a better term.

0 Fulda, J 2010, 'The Full Theory of Conditional Elements: Enumerating, Exemplifying, and Evaluating Each of the Eight Conditional Elements', Acta Analytica, 25, 4, pp. 459-477, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 1 June 2015.

1 Sanford, D 1989, If P, then Q, Routledge, p73

2 Girle, R 2009, Modal Logics and Philosophy, Acumen, Durham, GBR. Available from: ProQuest ebrary. [2 June 2015] p89.

3 Girle, R 2003, Possible Worlds, Acumen, Durham, GBR. Available from: ProQuest ebrary. [2 June 2015] p33.

4 Konyndyk, K 1986, Introductory Modal Logic, University of Notre Dame Press; 1st edition

5 Barker, SF 2006, 'Lewis on Implication', Transactions Of The Charles S. Peirce Society, 42, 1, pp. 10-16, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 1 June 2015.

My dumbest book purchase

I guess everyone has made a purchase that has regretted ever since. My case is nothing dramatic but it still stings. My purchase: Time Life's Mysteries of the Unknown.

This dates back to around 1992. There was a the school book fair and somehow the Time-Life folks managed to set sales appointment with my dad and I at our home. The representatives, two of them, managed to sell to us a way overpriced set for the list price of $100. Ouch. I don't know what got into my dad's head when he forked the money, but he rationalized the purchase by saying well we didn't have anything on these topics in our library.

Two aspects have stuck to me all these years. One is how one of the representatives slunk through my then weak defenses by stating that one of my friends, Solomon, had already bought a set. Never checked with Solomon, but I think that that the salesperson lied in stride. The other is that we didn't negotiate the price at all.

Oh, and it wasn't the complete set. What I got was just slightly more than half the volumes. From what I read on wikipedia, the whole collection was available  at the time.

The contents aren't all that good either. We already had some volumes of the Science Library, and probably assumed that Mysteries were on par. The artwork is fine and gives nice effects, but the text is boring and not really appealing. Most of the 'real life' cases are from England if I remember rightly. I think that the best volume was that on Transformations where vampires and werewolves are explored.

My incomplete set still sits there, mostly unread, but it taught me some lessons on money management, so I guess that the net effect was positive.

A more lively treatment of the paranormal and the occult can be enjoyed with the Hometown Tales podcast (one of the first!).  There have been no new episodes of late but, by the looks of it the complete archive is still available on iTunes.

Jane Pettigrew's Tea Companion

There are many books out there on tea and I would like to own them all. However, not able to afford them, I just own three; two audiobooks and one hardcover.  It turns out that I owned this hardcover even before I got interested in tea and this is The Tea Companion a Connoisseur's Guide by Jane Pettigrew. Today I wanted to give it a quick review.

It is divided into two parts, that first of which deals with the general aspects of tea, while the second one focuses on the different  tea regions & estates around the world. The information from the first part is just about enough for any newbie to get up to speed on history, current trade and production, accessories and, of course, preparation. Not any of these aspects is dealt exhaustively and much further reading can still be done, but as a primer it is an outstanding resource. The second part is a catalogue of the great teas by region. Each one has its own profile including its characteristics and preparation advice.  Following this, a word or two is mentioned on the less relevant, yet present, tea producing regions.

It is a small , profusely illustrated book. Very nice to flip through. In one sense  it is a coffee (tea) table book. However, as I see it, it is somewhat bipolar as to its intended audience. For beginners the first part is to the point and thorough, but the second seems useless as they are unlikely to have a chance soon to sample any more than a couple of the varieties mentioned. More experienced tea drinkers on the other hand can find new horizons to explore here, but will probably find that they already know the stuff from the first part, and hence, skip it.  As I write this I think that maybe, the intention after all is for the tea drinker to grow with the book. For my part I find myself consulting it more and more as I move into the pure varieties.

It is terrific to receive it as a gift and recommended if going seriously into tea, or if you're into book collecting.

There's a also an updated edition called The New Tea Companion which covers the same topics.

Crunchbang++ Linux

Not so long ago, Steve Gibson in his Security Now podcast intimated that he was looking for small sized, contained browsing experience. Thanks to his shows, I had already switched to a full-fledged virtual machine and had been happily browsing with no problem at all. However, his requirements for something that would not be too onerous resource wise kept nagging at me. I knew that Linux could do the work within a virtual machine, but the problem was finding the right distro for it. Now, I think I have found it: Crunchbang plus plus and I think I am in love.

Here's how I finally settled on it:

Started, and as many others with Linux Mint. For myself, my biggest constraint was disk space. Although fine, and useful, it took well over 10 GB. Something slimmer, had to be out there.

Swinged far to the other side and got Tiny Core Linux working, but YouTube wouldn't play with the newer flash versions. Also the mouse pointer wasn't as smooth. Similar experience with Puppy Linux which didn't support the Virtual Box additions and had way too many preinstalled programs.

Bodhi Linux, seemed like it, and has a focus on being minimalistic, letting you install your own stuff, but the Enlightenment desktop was too alien for me. And still, I guessed something smaller could exist.

Dabbled with taking snapshots of live CDs of Porteus and Lubuntu and these did work, after a fashion and might serve for specific purposes, but still the sessions wouldn't allow installing additions and rebooting and keeping it chugging from RAM seemed like counter purpose going forward.

Antix was another contender, but even changing the screen resolution from the menus was not straightforward. Also, an inserted DVD would have to be searched for manually.

Trisquel Mini was also one that worked, but for my purposes it's philosophy was more of a hindrance.

Finally Crunchbang plus plus gave me these benefits:

• Small footprint (2.5 GB with additions and chromium already added)
• A beauty (glass!)
• Based on Debian, whose terminal commands I'm more familiar with and is on a stable version
• Upgradable
• Alive and well and actively (so it would seem) developed
• Very few preinstalled software (but with options to add Libreoffice and the like at install time)
• Stats (Conky) on the desktop
• Nice terminal
• Additions work

As I see it, and the only way to make any more gains, and these minor, would be to 1) try the Debian netinstall (on my first attempt the installer crashed; will try again later on) ;or 2) get head on into Arch Linux. I will still check these out, but I think I have already hit bull's-eye.

Should plus plus go under there are at least two other Crunchbang "twins" that might be just as good: the one from Bunsenlabs & Monara.

Russell's Analysis of Mind book review

Somewhere right after I had read Bertrand Russell's The Problems of Philosophy and Logicomix by Doxiadis an audio version of Russell's Analysis of Mind was released on librivox. After listening to that while doing stretches I discovered that I had not retained anything (curiously, only that, on free fall, one's will amounts to nought). I could not let this stand and decided to try once more, this time with an ebook version, and take notes and all. This is my impression.

Analysis of Mind is a set of series of lectures delivered by Russell in China in the 1920s. According to some biography I checked he began working on them while in prison. With them he sets forth to show how mind can be reducible to images and sensations alone. In the first lecture he gives an overview of what is to follow on the rest of the lectures. He starts philosophically by retaking the opposing views of Materialists and Idealists which is reminiscent to what one finds in his Problems, and it appears that he is going to keep at it, but then channels the subject matter into a purely psychological groove.  Psychology at that time was being swept by the ascendant of Watson's behaviorism and Russell explicitly agrees that the only things that can be learnt of the mind are from external observation. However, he doesn't  takes all of Watson's assertions at face value, calling him on here and there. When appropriate, Russell also weaves in the viewpoints of other psychologists such as, Wundt, Thorndike, James among others.

On lecture III, Russell  takes what now appears as a conceptual dead-end, which is that of Richard Semon's engrams and mnemics as model. He believes that experiences might change the brain, but says he has no proof (we have now).

Something that I didn't catch on the first try, struck me this time around. In the the fifth lecture Russell roundly denies causality. He had already intimated this before, but now he was going full-steam ahead, which makes for an odd/uncomfortable way of looking at science.  On the positive side it makes me look into this quandary further.

Lectures IX - XIII (memory, words & meaning, general ideas, belief, Truth) appear to me the most true to Russell's style from Problems. By  time  of lecture XII however I had come to the realization that I was not getting something tangible out of the book.  Lecture XIII was interesting in itself as it expanded some of his already covered ground from Problems. Then again this lecture was more about philosophy than on actual psychology.

The second to last lecture, on the emotions, where he takes a look to the James-Lange theory, and the will, appears as if its going to get exciting and then abruptly ends making it  the shortest in the series.

The final lecture wraps up all the pieces from the previous ones in a unified whole, and thus 'proves' his thesis. My assessment is  that the structures he puts forth seem workable, but you have to buy into them by temporally forgetting what you know about current theories and in light of them Russell's feel a bit forced or unnatural. What's more it now makes me suspect his philosophical approach proper. Maybe he's got that wrong too!

After having finished the book I'm sad to say that after all I didn't get much new or revealing insights from Russell's analysis. He tries his best, sure, but the material that he works from is still primitive and much have been superseded or revised in the intervening century. One wishes that Russell could have had what we have now. Then, he could've made something remarkable to our current eyes.  The only reason I'd recommend it is for the mental challenge of trying to get to grips with it all; otherwise, not worth the trouble.  If you still want to check it out, start by the last lecture where he gives his uninterrupted argument and then decide which lectures you want to read if any.

Getting my dad on Linux

I'm worried about my dad catching malware on the net. The threats are escalating and he does nothing to protect himself. He's also 78 yo. If something were to happen, it would be up to me to fix whatever came up. I wish to make his surfing experience as painless as possible, have him protected and have me avoid as much as possible any tedious cleanup.

Up till now I've had him surf with Sandboxie and it has worked great: no infections or data loss. However, there have been some compatibility issues, such as Word documents not working at all, and cryptic notification messages from the program appearing here and there. On the whole the experience with it had turned from fine to kludgie. What's more, conceptually, being just one program, Sandboxie is a thinner layer of protection than what can be put together with just a bit more effort and with better end user experience. 

I decided to get him to use Linux within a VM.

This are the benefits I see going for this solution:

• Linux is by itself is of a different DNA than Windows, so Windows-specific malware will just not execute.

• Linux, as I see it, is now close to prime-time, meaning that the switch and maintanance is less confusing and awkward than it used to be (and not that long ago).

• A VM keeps the physical system clean and out of harm's way frequently for free.

• It also makes it easy to restore a given state quite speedily. So, messing up the guest is no problem.

• In my experience, there's no discernible loss of performance, if given reasonable resources (RAM and cpu cores)

The only problem, other than getting used to the few extra steps for the user, is getting files out of the system. We'll talk about that later.

Why not entirely Linux?

Mainly because inertia. I already know the limits of how much I can push Windows and how if something wrong happens to it, how to fix it. Not so, with Linux since I'm a newbie myself. I'm sure this will gradually change with experience. The other part is compatibility. Even with Wine and all, I want to be able that one program for him when he  or I need it. With Windows on the physical machine, I know I can count on native compatibility.

Setup:

For the host machine a brand new Dell Inspiron 3647 small desktop ( core i5-4460S, 8 gb 7200 hd) running on Windows 10 (upgraded from 7). As a parallel project, and to get him better loading times, I changed the spinning hard drive for a Samsung 850 evo SSD. I crossed my fingers for the SSD to not fail on us and I was not disappointed. Curiously, loading times for the snapshots were slower when I assigned three cores to the machine rather than two.

Virtual Machine:

Virtualbox. It has the features I need, its free and has a great company behind it, hopefully keeping it up to date for many years to come.

Guest:

Linux Mint 17.2. This is because all that he could  immediately need is already there: flash, office, vlc for media playback, printer support and more. For web browsing I eschew Firefox because I get a clunky feel from it, and because my dad did not like it on a previous run some time ago. Chrome feels slicker, also has pdf reading support, and my dad is already invested in the Google ecosphere, so that went in instead. Bodhi Linux for the guest as a whole felt like a good alternative and I gave it a try to see if I could build a slimmer guest by adding just the software I thought my dad could need and I did. However, I could not wrap my mind around its philosophy, which resulted in a less than optimal experience in my test run. I still think is worth checking it out for the very reason of building from its base up, but didn't pan for me this time. I saw no reason for other distros, because the system already could handle Mint flyingly, and what's the point? For myself I choose Crunchbang.

As additional software Dropbox. Getting the Brother 9970cdw to print from within the VM was straightforward. http://support.brother.com/g/b/downloadlist.aspx?c=us_ot&lang=en&prod=mfc9970cdw_all&os=128

Sharing:

Getting files out of the guest is the weakest part of my solution. There is not the easy drag-and-drop functionality I have got accustomed to from Virtual PC 2007. Sharing folders is possible, but there is no way I'm going to leave a hole open in my defenses.  Unfounded or not, I'm worried that something else will want to invite itself in for the ride. I'll have to look into this matter more closely later.

The best I can come up with for now is check  whatever file my dad wants to keep with Virustotal and then upload it to his Google drive and download it back from to the host. I'm willing to do this the first few times  and then teach him to do it by himself later. Not optimal, but I hoping for the moment that this awkward solution won't be needed enough to be a headache. From the other end, I set up another hidden "person" where there is  a live session of his Google account from which he can upload files, mostly scans for attachments.

But was he willing to learn?

With regards to technology he usually takes the path of least resistance. However, I have something to leverage my project with: his email. Most of his computer use is for email messages and if I can give him a better experience, let me tell you, he's all in for it.

Results so far

I am sad to say that the change was not a swimmingly as I had envisioned… And I'm mostly to blame.

When the computer was all set up, I thought I had the VM ready for a test run, but I had not thoroughly checked this time around all the things he might need. And right away, on the first use, he could not open a PowerPoint presentation. When I tried to fix that, he began to look discouraged at all the typing I was making, at the entering passwords and such. Then, VLC, which has a fine reputation for playing anything, began crashing the virtual machine right away, which was odd: I had tested it without a hitch previously, but now it wouldn't behave. Apparently there is something not quite working in the combination of Windows 10+Virtualbox 5 + Linux Mint 17.2+VLC. Had to change the setup back to totem. Days later, some encrypted presentations failed to open altogether owing that Libreoffice is entirely unable to deal with them, which was totally unanticipated. Up until now, it had dealt with anything that I had thrown it.

The worst part was me not being able to keep cool and patient with my dad. His complaints were: why change? It was easier before. Where is my background?

Windows 10, for its own part, had its own quirks that had to be ironed out. The worst offenders were the color scheme and the lack of an explicit shutdown button.

Took me a few extra days, but eventually the setup began to behave well,and he began using it regularly as he did with his old machine. He doesn't appear to care about the underlying platform as long as it does what he wants it to and Chrome has had a large part in this for its relative ease and familiarity.