Dear Klaus,

There are several strands of rhetoric going on in your post. You 
dispute my views. You also attribute views to me that I do not hold 
and dispute these attributions. Here, for example, you argue that my 
view is singular or one-side where I specifically acknowledge several 
possibilities or perspectives. Aside from the complaint about my 
person, you take me to task for answering your question on why I saw 
your syllogism as incorrect. You asked for the answer as I see it. I 
answered. At this point, I won't try to sort it all out. I'll respond 
briefly to the last post I said I would answer and call it a day.

(1) Clarifications

My post represented the logical "if" in your statement as a premise. 
The phrase "your concluding 'if'," referred to the entire concluding 
paragraph. The way I wrote the sentence may seem ambiguous. If so, I 
apologize. The context and the treatment of terms should have made 
things clear.

The phrase "your concluding 'if' takes the form of," does not mean 
that the single word "if" presents a logical conclusion. I intended 
to describe the concluding item in your post. Perhaps I should have 
written, "the concluding paragraph of your post takes the form of" or 
even "the final paragraph of your post takes the form of."

When I described the syllogism, the "if" statement was the premise, 
not the conclusion. That was clear.

My reply did two things. You asked what I thought was wrong with the 
syllogism. My answer explained what I saw as mistaken in your 
syllogism as you stated it.

In addition to this, I ALSO restated the syllogism as I would have 
stated it. I did not carelessly restate your argument in my words. I 
restated the syllogism in the way that I would have translated it to 
make it meaningful. I did not attribute the restatement to you. This 
was my restatement.

I didn't "blame" you for not saying that this was the only 
entailment. You did not say that this was the only entailment and I 
acknowledged that you did not say this. I also acknowledged that you 
_did_ state "the important provision that writing history entails the 
claim that it is based on what happened."

In my counter argument, I argued _my_ view that the meanings of both 
fiction and history require _additional_ entailments.

(2) Logic

Klaus, you write:

--snip--

"if A (fiction) = (is [defined as]) X (created, composed, sorted out 
and rearranged for others to make sense of) and as i suggested B 
(history) entails X, then it follows that B (history) = A (fiction) 
with the claim that it is based on what happened.

--snip--

In my view, the conclusion of this syllabus does not follow from the 
premises. This conclusion does not follow because history does not 
equal fiction with merely the addition of the single claim " that it 
is based on what happened." I made my argument in the prior post on 
why I believe this is an incorrect syllogism. If I stated the 
propositional logic incorrectly, I'd be curious to see a logician 
clarify this.

In stating that your syllogism was incorrect, I attempted to 
translate a common language sentence into propositional logic. You've 
translated your original sentence in a different way than I did.

The original sentence I described as an incorrect syllogism is:

--snip--

if fiction is created, composed, sorted out and rearranged for others 
to make sense of, as i suggested, history is fiction with the claim 
that it is based on what happened. their representational truth is 
not accessible.

--snip--

I disagree with your analysis of my logic and your own. You have 
stated your position and I have stated my position. We disagree on 
these points. Since my view is that you are mistaken on the logic of 
this, I don't agree with your explanation of what you consider my 
logical mistakes to be.

Perhaps a logician can explain why, how, or whether I am wrong in my 
earlier reply on the formal errors in your syllogism. I might well be 
wrong.

(3) Problematic Assertions

Even if the propositional logic is wrong, however, and your syllogism 
is formally correct, the argument rests on two problematic 
assertions. Formally correct syllogisms may be wrong, and even if 
your syllogism is correct, I argue this to be the case here.

The first problem is the equivalence A = X as though fiction is 
defined only in this way. You've defined fiction this way. You did 
not state that this is the only entailment, but you did state this as 
a complete equivalence without EITHER stating that this is the 
complete OR stating what other entailments of purpose or content 
would be necessary to define fiction. I argue that this definition of 
fiction is incomplete, and I assert that purpose, process, and 
content define fiction in a way that [creation, composition, sorting 
out and rearranging for others to make sense of] do not. The 
qualities of X hold true of much more than fiction -- fiction shares 
these properties with chemistry, music, physics, liturgy, and 
thousands more human-constructed genres. More must be said to define 
fiction.

The second problematic assertion is an equivalence based on one 
common property plus a single term. This single term alone fails to 
define the additional qualities of history. Two incomplete definition 
statements create a false equivalence between fiction and history 
rather than acknowledging the distinctions of difference that exist 
between them.

(4) The End of the My Part in this Thread

If a third party with some expertise in logic wants to sort me out 
on-list or off to show what's wrong with my earlier note or this one, 
please do. I've been mistaken more than once in my life, and I've 
changed my views more than once. That's the nature of the learning 
process.

For now, I'll stand on what I wrote when you asked me to explain why 
I saw your syllogism as faulty. Barring some new and genuinely 
surprising contribution, I shall withdraw from this thread.

Yours,

Ken



>ken,
>
>it's barely worth my time to engage with you in public debates about things
>that may not matter to other participants in this list, but it bothers me
>and i have been told by others as well how you so often distort what is
>being said and justify your singular point with lengthy citations from
>dictionaries, hide your opinions behind objective terms, as opposed to let
>us enjoy contemplating alternative perspectives on all too settled concepts
>-- which this list does quite well sometimes.  not that everyone is always
>clear, profound, and unquestionable.
>
>in the context of my suggestion that history is not produced by cameras but
>by creative historians who write to be read by other historians and
>interested contemporaries, you judged my syllogism faulty.  i am quoting you
>quoting me:
>
>>Your concluding "if" takes the form of an incorrect syllogism: "if fiction
>is created, composed, sorted out and rearranged for others to make sense of,
>as i suggested, history is fiction with the claim that it is based on what
>happened."<
>
>In terms of propositional logic "if" is not concluding anything.   it is
>followed by a condition.   and "is" signifies an equivalence relationship,
>here by definition.
>
>in terms of logic i said: "if A (fiction) = (is [defined as]) X (created,
>composed, sorted out and rearranged for others to make sense of) and as i
>suggested B (history) entails X, then it follows that B (history) = A
>(fiction) with the claim that it is based on what happened.
>
>in reading my assertion you replaced "A = X"  by "A entails X " and you
>blamed me for not saying that X is the ONLY entailment of A (and B).
>obviously, i did not say either and in fact i stated the important provision
>that writing history entails the claim that it is based on what happened.
>
>just be a little careful with your judgments and treat you colleagues and
>people on the list with some respect.
>
>klaus