Logic hates

[j4]

Is there a name for the (il)logical pattern that goes something like:

"I believe/think/have experienced X. You believe/think/claim to have experienced not-X. Therefore you are deluding yourself"

?

I've been tagging it as "false consciousness" in my brain, but that's a bit of a misnomer.

Comments

[juggzy.livejournal.com]

Solipism, narcissm, or self absorbtion.

[keirf.livejournal.com]

Or sociopathy?

[vatine]

I ususally label is at "category error", unspecified if it is on behalf of either or both. Sometimes, it is just miscommunication or reliance on non-shared frames of reference.

[teleute.livejournal.com]

Mostly it sounds like an inability to see another's point of view, and an inability to realise how much one's own experiences affect one's own viewpoint - especially in the cases which are actually "I have experienced X therefore I believe Y. If you do not believe Y you are deluding yourself." I suspect many judgemental religious believers fall into this category. In the general and severe case I believe it to be a sypmtom of narcissism (the psychological diagnosis).

However, in certain cases I think it's a perfectly valid statement: "I have experienced gravity acting to pull objects towards the earth. You claim to have experienced gravity acting to pull objects into the sky. Therefore you are deluding yourself." But where you get to draw the line between 'everyone believes it so it must be true' and 'just because a majority believe it doesn't mean I have to too' is probably a very handwavy place.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I have experienced gravity acting to pull objects towards the earth. You claim to have experienced gravity acting to pull objects into the sky. Therefore you are deluding yourself.

I'm not arguing with the conclusion (!) but I think the use of "therefore" is misplaced. There's no logical path from "I have experienced X and you have experienced not-X" to "you are deluding yourself" -- it's just that we happen to know enough about gravity etc to know that the person who claims to have seen it work backwards is probably mistaken, lying, mad, on drugs, etc. The handwavyness is around the shared assumptions that it's okay to take as a given... which mostly depends on context.

[teleute.livejournal.com]

So perhaps you'd be more comfortable with the statements "X has been scientifically proven, you claim to have experienced not-X, therefore you are deluding yourself."? Or is it the use of 'deluding' that is bothering you? I certainly agree that personal experience of X does not give one the right to assume delusion in anyone who hasn't experienced X.

[barnacle.livejournal.com]

I consider that to be less of a specific logical pattern than a breed of syllogism, one which is only true from a particular philosophical standpoint. That might be Berkeleian idealism, perhaps?

It's a perfectly valid view in more vigorous metaphysical structures, of course, and you find its equally blinkworthy converse in starey-eyed evangelical atheism. Well, I find I blink more often when people stare at me, at any rate.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I think the bit I'm really objecting to in the thing I (badly) described is the assumption that because A hasn't experienced (or genuinely thought or believed) the thing under discussion, B's claim to have experienced (or genuinely thought or believed) it must be false. It's ... it's arguing from your own experience to dismiss someone else's experience, which feels like rather insidious double standards. Or some kind of metaphysical autism.

Evangelicals of both stripes* do this, definitely. "You claim to have (never) experienced God, I have (never) done so, therefore you're deluded." Delete where applicable, PLEASE, DELETE DELETE DELETE.

* "badger evangelist"

[htfb.livejournal.com]

Gosh, I remember talking to you about your experience of God in the world at a party on the Botley Road in about, oh, 1997. You did very well in presenting a coherent picture, though the universally moralising God at St Aldate's is to my mind a metaphysical extravagance...

You ask for a technical term. A's and B's point of difference is in their idols of the cave (idola specus); A's fallacious dismissal of B is an idol of the theatre, idola theatri.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Your technical terms are beautiful, and "therefore" true. I will go and read more.

I sincerely hope that I didn't tell you that you were deluded for not having experienced God; though if I did, well, I guess most people have to be 18 once in their lives, but hopefully can avoid remaining so for any longer than strictly necessary. :-}

I'm not sure what you mean about the "universally moralising God" of St Aldate's, though. But then I've blanked a lot of it from my mind.

[nja.livejournal.com]

Bearing in mind that I have just walked a dozen miles and am sitting in Wetherspoons with the best part of a pint of Bath porter inside me pecking this out on my PDA:

There's a Latin or Greek word for suppressed premises which I can't remember, because I am not Gottlob Frege, But your suppressed premises (or those of your hypothetical arguing idiot) are that your knowledge etc is incorrigible and therefore X is certainly true. But how much of our knowledge is actually incorrigible?

I may not mean incorrigible. Time to haul myself up the hill I think.

[nja.livejournal.com]

Also (I am now in the bath), David Hume's essay on miracles is relevant, I think (if someone reports a miracle then because miracles are by definition very unlikely it's more probable that the person has been deceived or is confused if I remember correctly).

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Overconfidence/self-importance? There's no doubt a more formal fallacy as well, but that might not necessarily be the right way to think of -- it sounds like:

(a) I think/have seen X
(b) You think/have seen contradictory thing Y
(c) I'm right
(d) Therefore you're wrong

Without considering that they might be as likely to be mistaken as you are, or the relative certainties of the observations. Although I might have got the wrong end of the stick -- did any particular examples inspire this frustration?

[tigerfort.livejournal.com]

Without considering that they might be as likely to be mistaken as you are, or the relative certainties of the observations

or, depending on the type of argument, the possibility that both observations are correct (or indeed incorrect). ("It's sunny outside my window, therefore your claim that it's raining outside yours must be false.")

[http://users.livejournal.com/_swallow/]

I'm most familiar with this when it comes up as the double whammy of condescension and illogic:

I've experienced X. You haven't experienced X yet. Therefore when you grow up enough to experience X you'll realize I'm right.

I consider it imposing your narrative of progress on other people. With my friends it's shorthand, now-- "Sorry for narrative-of-progressing you."