What does the statement mean “People fight because they do not know how to argue”. I thought that to fight was to argue. Do the two differ and how so?
-Mike
It’s not at all a complex phrase. People resort to violence to settle a dispute, if they cannot settle by negotiation and discussion.
You thought ‘fight’ means ‘argue’, because the word fight has been used to indicate any sort of conflict. American hyperbolics, eh!
Yes, I believe you’re right, Pangloss. Gentlemen argue in lieu of fighting. A philosophical argument is a debate; a mathematical argument is a proposition. A fight is (to some degree) a violent struggle.
I’d like to generalize just for a moment in order to inquire about the nature of “meaning” versus “vagueness.” Wittgenstein (well, the later Wittgenstein) viewed the imprecision of our language as a source of linguistic enrichment, even though the vagueness of our everyday speech often leads to confusion. But it appears to me that we’re often deliberately vague in our normal conversations. I think we do this less out of laziness than from a need to maintain some ambiguity in our meaning. We use ambiguity to our advantage in any number of ways. I remember, for example, reading General Alexander Haig’s recounting:
“The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity that would be clearly understood.”
Come again, General?
The foolproof way of insuring that we’ll never make a wrong statement is to never make a statement at all. But the best way to say something while maintaining an impregnable defense, is to say something with a sufficiently vague meaning. The clearer we are in our assertions, the less wiggle-room we leave ourselves for insisting that the (inevitable) criticism of our assertions are only a misunderstanding on the part of the critic. As John Searle noted:
“There’s always the part where you say it, and the part where you take it back.”
This lesson hasn’t been lost on the religionists. Religious dogma purports to be God’s revelation, but it would be unseemly that God should have to retract his statements. What to do? Elevate vagueness of meaning into an art form. Maintain that your critics eternally misunderstand your position. If cornered by an outright contradiction, boldly proclaim it to be a mystery of faith.
But if no one ever understands what you’re saying, what have you said? In Wittgenstein’s words:
“… a nothing would do as well as a something about which nothing could be said …”
All right, when religionists are backed into a corner they claim to be misunderstood. What do philosophers do when they’re backed into a corner? Michael Gelven writes in his Truth and Existence:
“Everytime a philosopher gets backed into a corner by critical argumentation, he makes a new distinction. The webs spread out on finer and finer threads, spinning out further from the center until the very intricacy becomes puzzling as the problem the original distinction was made to solve.”
Distinctions raise the question of vagueness; where does one thing end and another begin? Can we even think of an individual man out of the context of his society or apart from his enviroment? The question of the vagueness of our distinctions permeates all the parts of philosophical thought. The Sorites Dilemma (The Heap Paradox) is at the center of this discussion. Distinctions are necessary, but distinctions aren’t the desired ends. Again, Gelven says:
“The temptation is to simply distinguish and walk away; but our deepest anguish is that such walking away is cowardly self-deceit.”
The same reason that makes distinctions must also make a synthesis of these distinctions. A philosopher that makes distinctions without following them up with a synthesis has left the greater part of the task undone. Gelven:
“Human acts, undistinguished, are not meaningful; but when we distinguish the good from the bad, the acts of men become conduct, and hence morally significant.”
I’ll end by giving a memorable example of the so-called Sorites Dilemma.
A man offers a woman a ten million dollars to sleep with him. She thinks over his offer and decides that as much as it would demean her to sleep with a man for money, still, ten million dollars is an incredible amount of money. So she accepts his offer. But just as quickly as she accepts he asks if she would sleep with him for twenty dollars. She screams indignantly, “What do you think I am, a whore?” He answers, “We’ve already established what you are, now we’re negotiating the price.”
If sleeping with him for twenty dollars makes her a whore but sleeping with him for ten million dollars does not, what dollar figure differentiates whorish from non-whorish behavior? Vagueness is a fascinating topic in philosophy.
Michael
Polemarchus stated:
This was most beautifully said, I have never seen such an enriching answer in so few words. If only you knew on how regular of a basis I encounter this very strategy in my day to day life.
Polemarchus stated:
I like this example so much that I am going to try to memorize it so that I am dwell on it wherever I go. One thing comes to mind right now, where do we draw a line between sex for the right reason and sex for the wrong reason? I’m not so sure Sorites was right when he said “We’ve established what you are, now we’re negotitating the price.” Don’t we all go for a person that gives us something we want? Some women go after a guy because he is good-looking which makes them feel those butterflies in their stomach and which creates the best course for sex. But isn’t the women doing it for her own pleasure? Yes. What about a woman that falls in love with a man? As Polemarchus and I were posting earlier, there is rationality as well as irrationality associated with love. So when we rationalize, do we not do so for our own benefit? As Clementine stated that she would not be with her husband if he was dumb. The opposite of dumb is what Clementine wants, so she picks a guy that is not dumb. But this is for her. So if we are convinced that we pick people for our own selfish reasons, how is it different from sleeping with a guy for $10 mill? From a utilitarian perspective I think the women who is offered $10 million has it in her best interest to say yes, more so than any other reason, except maybe ‘true love’ - but that’s a whole other topic. I know I know, everyone is going to say that it is the potential of ‘true love’ in each relationship that keeps women from being with guys they love and not guys giving away $10 million dollars. But like I said, I will have to ponder this example further…
What’s your take?