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Should the Primary Purpose of Argument be to
Show that You’re Right or to Show How You Think?
The character and history of a man can be related to his ideas in two ways: genetically, as a merely accidental element, as a condition; and by way of an inner relevance by which the historical and the trans-historical spheres are related to one another. To consider the first kind of relationship as the only possible one is the basis of all psychologism [the tendency to interpret events or arguments in subjective terms, or to exaggerate the relevance of psychological factors]. . . Indeed, there is no getting away from the world of personal motives as a conditional cause. Schopenhauer would not have developed a certain set of ideas if his mother had been a different person. This is psychologically interesting but not more; we shall always be aware of its relative significance. And yet to point it out is necessary for the plenitude of insight. Jaspers emphasizes the necessity of knowing one’s entire position, including one’s personal psychological background, to give fullness, as it were, to one’s philosophy. He was particularly wary of the pitfalls of psychologism, and his statement does not imply a simple reduction of philosophical ideas to conscious or unconscious motives, as it had with Nietzsche. It rather implies an added dimension, a rounding-off of insight.
Karl Stern (from The Flight from Woman, 1965)
It may be that twelve hundred men in Tottenham are down with smallpox; but we want to know whether this is stated by some great philosopher who wants to curse the gods, or only by some common clergyman who wants to help the men. . . Granted that he states only facts, it is still essential to know what are his emotions, what is his motive.
Daniel Dennett (from Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, 1995)
Religious (or simple) fundamentalism is the inability to see that words can’t do what we thought they could do, namely, establish truth with authority and without ambiguity. Philosophical (or sophisticated) fundamentalism is the inability to see that arguments can’t do what we thought they could do, namely, establish truth authoritatively and unambiguously.
If you have a God already whom you believe in, these arguments [such as the cosmological argument] confirm you. If you are atheistic, they fail to set you right. . . The fact is that these arguments do but follow the combined suggestions of the facts and of our feeling. They prove nothing rigourously. They only corroborate our preexistent partialities.
William James
The closest we can get to impartiality is admitting we are partial.
G. K. Chesterton
[The following was inspired by William James’ statement, ‘In all sad sincerity I think we must conclude that the attempt to demonstrate by purely intellectual processes the truth of the deliverances of direct religious experience is absolutely hopeless.’]
The attempt to prove (in the ordinary wide sense), to the satisfaction of every honest, intelligent, well-informed person, the superiority of either the religious or the irreligious view of life is intellectually hopeless. (Or, alternatively, it is not possible to establish by purely intellectual processes the greater plausibility, probability, rationality, etc. of either theism or metaphysical naturalism.)
No argument can establish the truth of its premises, since if it tried to do so it would be circular; and therefore no argument can establish the truth of its conclusions.
Not all houses are equal. Some are palaces and some are hovels: some are elegant and some are charmless: some are well constructed and others are thrown together. But each one has its good and bad points. So also with arguments. Every argument, like every structure, has some good points, some usefulness. And being open-minded means being receptive to every argument, however strongly we reject its conclusions. More particularly it means going out of our way to discover its usefulness, never being dismissive, and sometimes being indulgent.
Thoughts about Argument & Belief
Arguments that don’t satisfy us emotionally usually don’t satisfy us intellectually.
William James
He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.
John Stuart Mill
Dale Carnegie
I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.
Oscar Wilde
There is a certain amount of trauma involved in changing any long or deeply-held belief.
Sydney Smith
Many people like their beliefs, opinions and prejudices more than they like reason.
No useful discussion is possible unless both parties to the discussion start from the same premise.
Mediæval Maxim
It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them.
Pierre Beaumarchais
Sacha Guitry
People only see what they are prepared to see.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man has his beliefs: his arguments are only his excuses for them . . . we only see what we look at: our attention to our temperamental convictions produces complete oversight as to all the facts that tell against us.
George Bernard Shaw
Bertrand Russell
Metaphysics is the only thoroughly emotional thing.
G. K. Chesterton
G. K. Chesterton
It is as absurd to argue men, as to torture them, into believing.
John Henry Newman
The analogy is a particularly tricky form of rhetoric when it becomes the basis of an argument rather than merely a figure of speech.
Northrop Frye
A drop of water is not immortal; it can be resolved into oxygen and hydrogen. If, therefore, a drop of water were to maintain that it had a quality of aqueousness which would survive its dissolution we should be inclined to be sceptical.
Bertrand Russell (arguing against immortality)
The first condition of right thought is right sensation.
T. S. Eliot
The mind is always the dupe of the heart.
La Rochefoucauld
Bertrand Russell
Samuel Johnson
The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest till it has gained a hearing.
Freud
Not everybody can be converted to some viewpoint by reason. But some people can be converted by reason.
Arnold Lunn
There is nothing purely rational which is strong enough to bind the heart of man.
Karl Stern
A man convinced against his will,
Is of the same opinion still.
Very few people listen to argument.
G. K. Chesterton
Time makes more converts than reason.
Tom Paine
Samuel Butler
Lewis Mumford
We demand strict proof for opinions we dislike, but are satisfied with mere hints for what we’re inclined to accept.
John Henry Newman
What ardently we wish, we soon believe.
Edward Young
Malcolm Muggeridge
George Orwell (from The Prevention of Literature, 1946)
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