AVOIDING SIXTY-ODD COMMON ERRORS
IN FORMULATING WHAT YOU WISH
TO SAY IN A DISCUSSION

© 2001-2004 by Orchid Land Publications  

[updated 20040820]

INTRODUCTION

[As a result of some months on internet lists having to do with this or that kind of Christianity, and as a result of receiving emails addressed to me as editor of this website, I have a few points that experience shows me would contribute to better exchanges of ideas.  (I omit the emotional attitudes that interfere with good discussions as being too self-evident to bring up.)  When I actually heard a very well-known Evangelical TV preacher say, "We know that other religions are wrong because God's Book says so," I could only wonder how solid that argument could be, given that a member of any other religion could make exactly the same argument in defence of her or his religion.  

     The points put forward below are meant to help those who have minimal useful experience in rhetoric and logic and are hence prone to draw wrong conclusions from what an interlocutor says, make misdirected charges, or commit other errors that, when pointed out, lead to their avoidable embarrassment.  There are of course some e-mailers that will never be able to carry out a discussion--either because of a subjectivity they cannot control, an inability to see the other side's point, a lack of training and/or simple fairness--too strong a desire to "win" rather than find out what is truly true--or some sort of cognitive blindness.  And philistinism (anti-intellectualism) also prevails in many fundamentalist quarters of all Faiths.

GOOPHASMS:  First series

     When engaging in a discussion with another person who is good and experienced in arguing a point or with a person who is arguing from the premises of a paradigm having axioms and premises--and hence truth values--quite different from those of the paradigm that you (usually unconsciously) set out from, you could well consider the procedural points below (also check out THIS PAGE on apologetics, and cf. also R109 and R175):

     1. If your axiom about a term under discussion conflicts with another's axiom determining what any term refers to, the only reasonable discussion is: :If . . ., then . . . , i.e.  If your axiom is  X, then it follows (or doesn't follow) that Y is true--or false; but if my axiom ix Z, then other things (cannot) follow from it and Y is true--or false.  Heated and wasted discussions and frustrations arise when someone tries to impose his or her own axiom on another.  Don't be fooled.  Axioms are not true nor false; they are fairly arbitrary, embraced for any number of cognitive, emotional, or strategic reasons.  They may have been impossible at a certain point of history; they may conflict with other axioms in the same paradigm; or they may be so inconsonant with experienced reality that they are worthless.  One can discuss those things.  But they cannot be "false."  Don't waste time on those who try to condemn your own position on the basis of axioms that they accept but you don't:  De axiomatibus non disputandum.  One cannot "prove" an axiom wrong or right, but it can be shown to be useless if that is what it is in terms of the real world.  Only materiality is real for some; materiality is religiously irrelevant for many.  But the form of how one argues from a given premises to a conclusion is universal.  It is quite in order to point out an illogical deduction from something previously agreed on or established.  The way to reach truth has a limit--viz. one's axioms about what can (cannot) be.   One should allow an interlocutor to define one's terms--even though it will usually make the interlocutor's statements undisprovable.  To try to prove a statement made n another paradigm wrong according to the premises of one's own paradigm--a common phenomenon--is to betray ignorance or a lack of interest in the truth.   Unless s/he allows you to use your axioms and definitions--and eschews trying to disprove your statements with his or her axioms and definitions--you should (unless you are eristic and love arguing to no purpose) decline further discussion; there are better ways to spend one's time.  It is appropriate to say, "Please clarify exactly what you define X so that I can get a firm grasp of what you mean IN YOUR FRAMEWORK."  Don't let yourself be ambushed without your knowing what has happened, let alone by bullied by another trying to force her or his axioms and definitions on you.  A definition is not true or false, though its merits can be discussed by any but the most pig-headed interlocutors.  To sum this up:  If you deduce arguments from axioms not accepted by the person you are discussing your subject with, you can't get anywhere; the only thing worth discussing is the utility of your axioms or their congruence with reality.
     2. Fideism and replacing reasoning with slogans is no way to proceed.  One constantly hears or reads statements by those supposing that they are  asserting something when they are simply stating a definition of premise.  Simply saying something doesn't make it true or correct.   One may simply be laying down a premise or definition.  Definitions and axioms are (unargued) assumptions, not assertions.  ("It is not moral do do this or that" can be an assertion deduced from certain premises; but it is often put forward by a list-minded person as what amounts to no more than a truth-invulnerable axiom embrace by the speaker or writer through an act of volition rather than through reasoning.)  What has been said does not mean that one cannot have good reasons for arguing in favor of embracing or rejecting a definition or axiom; but it does mean that definitions and axioms are invulnerable to any falsification except a showing that they conflict with another definition or premise alleged by the same speaker or writer.  Historically, one can argue that those living prior to the invention of a definition or premise (e.g. in the Middle Ages) could not have held it. This is a very telling argument in some theological discussions.  If you cannot distinguish a truth-vulnerable statement from a premise, you should not engage in discussions with anyone but your own clique.
     3. Asserting something more loudly or without proper evidence doesn't convince. 
     4. One is constantly aware of those who think that truth stands alone.: This item or that item is true or false.  While there may be some perception that when two allegedly true items contradict, both cannot be true, there is often little sense of the relatedness of items in a global whole.  One allegedly true item may not be compatible with the pattern that the other fits.  What then?  One must ascertain whether the pattern of assumptions is tenable--being axiomatic or defintional, they are neither true nor false--or whether a given true item is a counterexample to the global pattern.  Some people cannot grasp patterns, only individual items; and we all are reluctant to do what is needed.  But if we want truth, we have to undertake the task.  Christians who believe that the Reason (LOGOS) of God (John 1:1,3) created the cosmos also believe that the cosmos is therefore logikós.  (I'm not proposing a rationalist view of religion--far from it--just one in which truth is not overturned, as when a literalist interprets a passage to mean its opposite.)  Given the acceptance of the intelligible character of the cosmos, it is the moral duty of everyone--o the extent of one's ability--to train oneself to work at resolving whether one's set of axioms and assumptions are wrong.  Note that axioms and definitions cannot be true or false; they are just assumed and taken for granted..  Our educational system does not train people to think.  Clearly, if an scarcely disputable truth is incompatible with our premises and presuppositions, it is these that have to be checked and perhaps revised, unless some other way out can be projected.
    5. Mixing niveaux is a common error.  Given that doctrine is on the niveau of mind and practice and canons are on the level of will, calling a practice (e.g. new calendar) a heresy is an idiotisme.  An error of practice (rather than belief) may well be due to a heresy, but it cannot be a heresy.
     6.  If you are both so convinced of your own position that you are unwilling to let a discussion go where it flows and also so emotionally involved that you cannot see how you could be wrong, you are doomed to frustration.  It doesn't matter if you are right:  You won't be able to convince others of your point of view.  This is, in one's experience of many discussions, probably the most common cause of discussions' falling apart.  

     7. Argue with specific, evidenced facts.  Be constantly aware that an assertion that is not argued is like an axiom or definition--invulnerable to being wrong or right.  Some correspondents, whether agreeing with me or disagreeing with me, think that just asserting something to be the case makes it true.   Others seem think that an assertion becomes true if asserted often enough--whatever "enough" may be in their view--apparently perpetually in some instances.  There are two kinds of valid arguments:  (i) Factual evidence and what one can logically deduce from it.  (ii) Positions accepted by one or all sides of a discussion that it is in order to make logical deductions from.   The lamest of most unworthy of all retorts  is simply to assert that one's interlocutor is wrong or unconvincing if one fails to show how and why this is so.
   8. As soon as you reveal yourself to be closed-minded or intolerant of dissent that is both honest or since and  well-argued (in some paradigm that you understand) and is not intended to be harmful--in short, as soon as you reveal yourself to be closed-minded--you reveal yourself to be uneducated in a deep sense.  People have a right to disagree if they offer decent arguments according to their abilities; if they don't, they are treating themselves as animals who cannot reason, creatures dominated by feelings and passions.  This often materializes as an avowed relativism (CLICK HERE).  It is possible to be learnëd without being educated.  I wouldn't waste my time arguing with such a person.  (Cf. point 10 below.)  I am happy to discuss things with uneducated people who are doing the best they know, but I have minimal patience for those who have been exposed to an education and have had a chance to become educated but have not become so and blatantly violate the points listed here.  
    9. You give evidence of a lack of education if your method of discussion avoids addressing the arguments raised by whoever it is that you are arguing against.  There can be no dialogue (see the book by Yankelovich cited above) or indeed any intelligent discussion if one party ignores the points of the other side that undermine and nullify one's own arguments.  A philistine approach is just to keep harping on one's own points and never addressing the arguments of those of the other side--which, insofar as they are valid, make one's own points of no avail.  Some participants in conversations seem to have only one string in their lyre.  It is as though they thought that if they kept saying something often enough--over and over--it would suddenly seem convincing to others. 
   10. Avoid  jumping from one context to another while arguing--in a new and different context--a point that is germane to the other context.  This confuses whatever force your argument may be endowed with.  (See also point 14.)  Be sure that time and place--or else universality--remain constant in your thinking and in what you say.  Be sure that what you say in one place  is consistent with what you have said earlier.  In most discussions, it is good to reach some sort of closure to whatever is on the table before opening up new lines of discussion--new topics.
   11.  Don't confuse an ad hominem argument (attacking an individual's integrity or motives rather than dealing with the ideas in question)  with an acceptable argument.  It is no more an argument than almost any slogan is--unless of course a person's moral status is the topic of discussion..  Stick to the facts.  Mention a name only to show that what one says is relevant to an idea that is floating around . . . or to show that one is not making up what one says.  A particularly uneducated (and indeed juvenile) subcategory of ad hominem argumentation is name-calling or labeling--naming one's inerlocutor with some term that in the context is a term of opprobrium.  It's quite in order to call something by an accurate name--if one doesn't confuse that with an argument.  But pasting a label on someone you are arguing against that has nothing to do with the argument but is rather  intended to put someone down does not reflect a high standard.  You can call an argument Arian, Nestorian, Gnostic, Origenist, Evagrian, Platonic, Aristotellian, Lutheran, or whatever.  But if it (however apt it may be) doesn't advance an argument, what's the use of coming across as simply antagonistic?  Among educated discutants, it is justified if simply meant to avoid side-tracking the main point.
    12. Avoid the silliness of claiming that the same origin of  two ideas or things means that they should be considered identical or very similar.  Birds and dinosaurs are not very similar despite their common origin.   

    13.  Some confuse accounting for  or explaining with defending, justifying, agreeing with, i.e. with the use one makes of an explanation.  This is the source of much misunderstanding.  To give an unfavorable explanation is not necessarily to express prejudice against a group, an idea, or anything else.  To confuse objectivity with subjectivity is an elementary (but by no means rare) error.
   14. Remember Einstein's admonition that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  Sheer repetition is (with rare exceptions) the method of a feeble thinker or the method one has to use on a feeble thinker who cannot get one's point.  On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with repeating an important point; it may not sink in otherwise.  
   15.  An open mind is not the same thing as a broad mind.  Unless you regard yourself as infallible, you should be open to being convinced by ideas not previously held by you.  One discovers that it is less embarrassing to see and concede that one has been wrong (i.e. to admit that one is not infallible) and to say,  "Hey, I was wrong," than it is to hold out and be humiliated by being shown to be wrong while foolishly or vainly continuing to deny it.
  16.  If you are a Western Christian, you might test your mettle against the Orthodox view that if God attributed Adam's guilt to innocent newborns, He would be the cause of evil; and that if He were to be wrathful at them because of the guilt He has laid on them, He would be insane.  But then the Orthodox view of the Fall, death (including Christ's Death), and Salvation are ontological, not juridical (and they don't assume that death is a penalty imposed by God for anything).
  17. No argument exists in isolation.  A list mentality fails to realize fully that what one says about any element in a system affects the other elements--the way wiggling one side of a cobweb affects all of its nodes.  If you are unable to connect the dots, you expose yourself to at times humiliating rebuttals--which, however, you may well not understand if your mind is not able to cope with coherent systems.  One should not contradict what one has said on page 8 with what one says on page 28.  That is the downfall of many a would-be debater.  You will in time be caught out.
  18. On the date I'm writing this, I just heard on Public Television an analyst use a new term.  When the interviewer asked her what the term means, the obviously very knowledgeable and intelligent analyst replied by trying to explain the term in question by the very term itself over and over--i.e. defining an unknown term with itself!!!  Aarrgghh!!
  19.  An elementary consideration often violated has to do with avoiding category confusions; see below.  One confuses a description of the role of matter and time with a definition or axiom about them. The descriptive-ontological-rational parameter often gets confused with the volitional/practical/desiderative parameter.   One can DEFINE faith/belief as a superstition on the volitional parameter rather than DESCRIBE it (as distinct from superstition) as based on evidence, i.e. on the rational parameter.  The idea that something on the moral (volitional) parameter (like Adam's sin) can be inherited on the physical parameter ("through natural generation") is traditional in the West.   This confusion is one of the most basic and embarrassing,  since the argument of whoever falls into the confusion is completely ruined as soon as one's interlocutor points it out.   See the section below on this problem.  That the Fall and Salvation are ontological for the East and juridical--a very different dimension (parameter) for the West makes for a lot of cross-talk on interfaith sites; e.g. contending that a moral trait (sin, guilt) can be inherited physically ("by natural generation," which is ontology) is vulnerable to the charge of this kind of confusion.   Other category-confusions include that  between revelation and the words that express a revelation--words of the Greek Bible and that between political differences and belief differences.  Note that the fact that politics and beliefs influence each other does not argue for their being on the same dimension.  The idea that love can make the false true is one of the silliest confusions--a confusion of the non-cognitive with the cognitive.  This idea is on a par with the act of hating one who disagrees with you.
  20. It's hard to proofread one's writing onscreen (when replying to items on a forum or BB); and sometimes correcting a statement can omit adjusting a non-, an un-, a without, etc.  But every writer should realize this; and before jumping on or at it, one might well suggest that the author must have meant something different.
  21. Don't waste valuable time and space on marginal issues.   Address the real issue or issues.  (It may help to write them down on a chit.)   Don't confuse another's illustration of what his/her problem is with an argument intended to bolster up a contention.  Avoid items that may interest you but which serve only to throw dust in the eyes of the reader and get the discussion off of the track in some dead-end diversion.   (Some people, even persons with list minds rather than system minds, find it very hard to stick to the point of a discussion.  And lots of us are tempted to throw in items just because we like them.) 
   22.  Arguing by showing an accomplishment achieved that is not something one's interlocutor considers good (or even actual) hardly convinces. 

   23. Here's a new one that came in yesterday:  "God doesn't love; God is Love.  God doesn't dispense justice; God is Justice."  Without denying that there is a legitimate way of saying (as Scripture does) that God is Love in the sense of His being the "Source of love" or "full of love," it is obvious that Love and dispensing justice are energies and  hence not (except for those who confuse energies with essences) essences.  Otherwise, we would say that the smell of an animal is that animal, that a point in one's finger is one's finger, the black skin of a person is that person, etc. 
   24.  An avoidable confusion is that of means and ends.  Is Church unity simply an end; is it the best means to spreading truth; can it be both--in different respects, say with the end of means itself being the means to a yet higher end?  What is needed is to keep it all straight.

   25. The most infantile goophasm is to generalize from some to all.  This is not only silly, but the source of many prejudices.  One correspondent confuses converts who later defect with all converts.

   26. Among the assortment of non sequiturs that come one's way is the claim that acting according to reason implies that one rejects Grace and the help of prayer and the Holy Spirit.

   27.  Circular reasoning is by no mans rare.  This is demonstrating that X is true because of Y, and then in a later part of the argument contending that Y must be true because X is true.  One starts out with a premise that would account for a phenomenon and then uses the phenomenon to prove that the premise is correct.

   28. Some binary mentalities confuse a neutral middle position with the position contrary to their own:  What is neither M nor N is considered to be N by those upholding M and to be M by those upholding N.

   29.The idea that a default option is proper to one's argument when non-default options are available and applicable is erroneous.  A default option is proper only when no other option fits.
   30.  Be careful not to attribute to the other side any contention you think s/he must be making rather than what s/he actually has been making . . . whether assumptions or deductions from those assumptions . . . unless you can logically deduce a view from what has been asserted.   (Of course, guessing why one is saying what one is saying may be important; but don't act as though your guess were right until you know from the other's evidence.)  Don't assume over and over that your interlocutor has this or that idea when there is no evidence or likelihood of that's being so.  The writings that argue against matters no in contention are legion.  And generally speaking, instead of saying,  "You appear to be saying" or "You must think" and the like, it is better form to say:  "Since Y logically follows from the X that you are maintaining, am I right in concluding that you therefore subscribe to Y?"   It is really bad form to attribute to another something that the other hasn't affirmed and which cannot be shown to follow from whatever the other has actually affirmed.  That's not the way to get at truth.  It is in order to say, "I can think of no way you can be maintaining that X unless you are assuming that Y."  Aside from the usual errors of logical argument, false generalizations--the basis of prejudice and a closed mind--account for the most avoidable errors and are in some ways the worst.   It is not good form to assume that someone who (dis)agrees with me on one thing necessarily (dis)agrees with me on another.  One should ask, "Given that you and N (dis)agree on X, would I be correct in assuming that you both (dis)agree on Y?"

GOOPHASMS:  Second series

   1. It is not seldom that one encounters a confusion of modal verbs; e.g. of will with can, not least when can has the import of having a right to do something.  The usage of may and might has been so reversed nowadays that it is hard to tell whether the one or th'other means "is possibly gonna" or "unlikely will."
   2. Confusion between a principle and a test case occurs.  A test case does its job only when it tests one principle.  It is best to avoid a double argument:  Break it down into separate arguments.
   3. Some argue about a subject in one respect and then, without realizing it, continue arguing in another respect.  Confusion is the outcome.  
   4. An aggravating error to "prove" something by a point that has already been disposed of during an earlier part of the discussion and shown to be faulty or non-probative. 
   5. What a person intended sometimes gets confused with what actually happened . . . or with unintended consequences that resulted . . . or with what possibly unintended use has been made of the intention.   
   6. Misgeneralization of a subset (some) to set (all).   Or the misgeneralization of a set to subsets  without allowing for differing conditions--e.g. differences of time or place.  When Y immediately follows X, it is not justifiable to conclude that X has caused Y (cf. Aristotle's Rhetoric, II.xxiv.7-10), unless it always happens.   The occurrence of the same phenomenon in two places or at different times does not prove that both have the same cause.   Even in the non-mechanical realm of will, it is not legitimate to conclude that every cause of an action was intended; unintended results of actions do occur.
   7.  It does not rise above simple dishonesty to say that one is a literalist while at the same time upholding a metaphorical or other kind of non-literal interpretation of, say, John 6:53-54.  How can one claim something is infallible (except by definition) unless one is infallible or can infallibly point to an infallible judge that says the thing is infallible?  (How could you know that the judge of infallibility is infallible unless you are an infallible judge of who and what is infallible?)  It's an infinite regress that should be avoided.  
     8.  It is argued that if y is derived from x, x  = y--as if the larva and the butterfly were the same thing.   
     9.  It is argued that is y fulfills x, y = x.  The argument of the hen and the egg on one level; on another, getting a degree fulfills the work devoted toward that end, but who would confuse the goal with the means?
    10.  The argument that Christianity was a variant of Judaism.
    11. Arguing from quantity to quality or from normality to naturalness (as if postlapsarian norms were not mostly unnatural, especially in the moral realm) is faulty.  The predominance of murderers in a given prison doesn't make murder a quality to be promoted.
    12.  When asked if you know more about X than Y does, you infer that Y is claiming to know more about X than anyone--not just people you know--you have misgeneralized the context.  This is a common goophasm.

    It makes no sense for a participant in a discussion to say, "If you are not X, you are Y-- the only other choice in THAT PERSON's thought world.  They are often not the choices offered in another's thought world.

GOOPHASMS:  Third series

    One would have thought that the first series would have been enough; but it appears that mis-arguments are inexhaustible; they keep coming in.
    1. Some writers don't even understand what the difference(s) between those participating in a discussion actually is (are).
   2. People accidentally or intentionally distort others' positions with alacrity.  This is probably not often done on purpose but results from obtuseness, not listening, or simply mis-hearing . . . and very often because of interpreting another's statements in one's own quite different axiomatic paradigm.  
   3. Some who cannot grasp an argument denounce it as gibberish in order to cover up their obtuseness.  
   4. Religious disputes are more bitter because they are about eternal realities.    In uneducated religious discourse, as in all uneducated discourse, many will suppose that saying something over and over--or saying it all the louder--will make it come across as true(r).    (The equivalence of loudness is the use of entirely upper case--something justified only for special technical terms or to avoid an expressions not being concentrated on a bit--in which instances the capital letters are best written in a smaller font size so as not to stand higher than the lower-case letters.)  This childishness is typical of bullies.  It is used to substitute for a proper argument with people are unable to develop.  Those lacking a wealth of ideas will envy those with ideas.  It's sad to reflect that coarse discourse prevails on some Orthodox lists.  
     5. Some people cannot separate persons (or authorities) from ideas.  (See 3 in the first series of goophasms.)  They are unable to free their minds enough from these distractions simply to discern whether an argument is compelling or logically faulty, containing a non-sequitur or a convincing "sequitur."  An extreme form of this are ad hominem arguments already mentioned.  These are more frequent on the semi-anonymous Internet than face-to-face, since one cannot see the person one is trashing.  They want an almost will-based authority in place of a compelling (non-faulty) line of argumentation.  Anyhow, the appeal to an authority is clearly a waste of time unless all parties to a discussion accept that authority.  Appealing to a mistranslated Bible is not the same as appealing to the Greek canonical Bible.  

   6. Some persons cannot descend from generalities to offer anything concrete, say, an example.  This is one of the ways of "waving hands at a problem."
   7. Worthy of mention those who won't let those who disagree with them lay out their argument, which they just cut off some some interruption.  Of course there lies on a respondent the obligation to be as concise as the situation permits and not drag out the rebuttal until everyone is bored to tears.
  8. Confusing explicanda with explicantia, circular arguments occur; some think they are proving a thesis by re-asserting it.

9. Among the absolute irrelevancies that people adduce is to contrast following God's will with seeking converts--from a priest who admits he hadn't made any converts over the years except his mother.  (No wonder; maybe, as is said of mothers of a certain ugly animal, only a mother could love someone like that!)       

 10. One argument occasionally met with responds to something one mentions one has been working on or completed (perhaps with a bit of elation and relief)--something that is remote from one's hearers interest or even understanding:  This is "Aren't you interested in what I say about [some other subject than the one presented at the beginning]; why are my views not included?"   This argument requires more than a logician to deal with.
  11.  It is likewise that those who confuse SHOULD BE with IS.  An ardent defender of the canons who finds out that his bishop would be deposed if the canon were applied gets lost in what should be when he cannot defend what is. 
  12. For a non-specialist to contradict a specialist in some subject is a type of arrogance that need not be discussed further.  A specialist can err like everyone else; but if a specialist states very clearly that such and such a technical term means X, the odds are greatly in favor of the specialist's being right.
  13. Inexperienced arguers fail to qualify what they say to a proper degree, perhaps because they take for granted that hearers will not be misled.  Overstating or overgeneralizing a truth is a frequent error.  And inexperienced will often overlook a qualification actually expressed in a discussion and argue against a more general assertion than the one on the table.   
  14. Confusion of causes with effects, or rather with motives or competences, on the one hand, and results, on the other.  One may discuss the responsibility of a planner of something, but the interlocutor can't stop thinking about the non-responsibility of the sheep that accede to what is planned.
  15. A somewhat amazing error is to assume that one believes the Church is above Scripture if one says that one believes that the Orthodox believe that the highest authority is  Scripture as interpreted by the consensus of the Fathers--or the holy tradition for, if you will, the Church--which of course adds to and build on what has gone before without undermining it.  It would be absurd to think that, when a court interprets the national Constitution, the court is setting itself above the Constitution--which, if such were so, we could replace the Constitution with courts, abolishing the former.  No genuine Orthodox advocates abolishing the Bible.   Naturally, each generation interprets reality in accord with current knowledge--but interpreting the waters as energy and the darkness as dark energy/matter (still 95.5 per cent of the cosmos) does not conflict with the energetic view of reality always assumed in Orthodox thinking.  A dogma is empty until filled with interpreting doctrines aimed at warding off errors and helping our understanding of the dogma.  Those who claim they don't do this simply reduce beliefs to unsubstantiated (and hence superstitious) slogans or mantras.  The person making such a charge interprets John 3:5 and 6:53-54 as well as 1 Pet. 3:15, 2 Pet. 0:0, and Col. 2:22.  
   16. Probably the strangest argument, vehemently expressed, that has come to my attention is the charge of arrogance against a person's preferring to describe John Calvin's theology to the theology of the person making the charge--a person who has written no known theological treatise.
   17. An inexcusable blunder is an argument by a non-Orthodox theologian trying to understand and critique Orthodox doctrine.  He advances the idea that becoming an ontological member of Christ, sharing His Life, is not to have a personal relationship with Christ.  How being one with another person allows one to say that this is either no relation or not a person relation eludes me.  I know of no logical term for such a blunder.  
   18. Polar (either-or, two-valued) logic keeps fomenting everything from fanaticism to low-level errors.  The idea that if one does not agree that X, then one is anti-X, there being no neutral position in the middle.  I've recently come across a statement from the same non-Orthodox theologian referred to in 16 who, in reporting on Orthodoxy, concludes that the Orthodox believe that one must "abandon" (rather than agree to and surmount) reason and will to achieve unity with God.  To use noûs or transcendent apperception is not to abandon reason and will; it in fact subsumes and rises above them.  
   19. The argument in 17 is like arguing that because all ecumenical activity between the Orthodox and non-Orthodox has been fruitless or even damaging, therefore all interfaith discussions must inevitably be--rather than are likely to be--fruitless and damaging.  The very idea must be denounced as heretical.  That is not a sound argument.  It can easily be refuted by pointing out that if interfaith discussions were carried out in some other manner than heretofore--a manner in which the past problems are obviated--there are no grounds for denouncing them as inherently wrong, at least prior to their being tried.  Even if that approach fails, some other method may offer an acceptable solution--not the solution of bringing contradictory beliefs together, which is impossible except for a relativist--but a solution that understands the items discussed in their own terms (as the result of their own premises)--in which case, one can re-examine the premises and perhaps show oneself or others that they lead to conclusions that all agree are unacceptable.

20. There occurs a confusion between explanation and blame.  For example, if one explains the cause of something, say the influence of an outside entity, some falsely assume that one is blaming that outside entity.  Explanation and blame are quite different things.  

21. A curious confusion is that between normal (statistical frequency) and normal (what promotes a thing's nature).  In the fallen state we live in, the natural is as likely to be abnormal as not.  Don't assume that being frequent means being necessary. 

22. Confusing a subargument with the supra-argument.  Suppose that the allowability of X is at issue.  Someone, P,  admits that X is all right except when it endangers Y--usually one's personal definition of Y.  A logical attack would be to show that Z, acceptable to P, endangers Y far more than X does.  Note that the Z involves a subargument (an exception in this example); it does not refute the main argument in whole but only in part.  The interlocutor Q, who does not understand the argument structure, claims that Y is an argument against X, even though X has been granted, whereas Y qualifies the acceptance of X in one respect.  IF Y is a marginal qualification, X will mainly stand; if Y is an important issue--even THE ISSUE in Q's mind--then of course the status of X will be fragile.  One should not confuse the issue (X in this example) with what one supposes to be the issue.

23.  Non-arguments.  Someone sends me a pretty picture of something--an icon, an altar, a chalice, etc.--with a pious sentiment.  Since I know the person belongs to a religion that rejects sacrifice and images, I ask why such-and-such was sent.  I receive back half a dozen Bible verses that have nothing to do with the question.  This can come from otherwise intelligent people who are so used to turning off their logos "reason" in religious matters (and considering that to be virtue) that they see nothing askance in the preceding.

24.  One get can off of top about whether X is good or bad by comparing X with Y, even though the interlocutor may not be a fan of Y.  When the comparison is irrelevant, why bring it in?

    One can re-read what one has said before sending it and make a report card, so to speak, of how what one has said stands up on each of the foregoing points.  It is dreary to see how much space can be taken up with irrelevancies, patently empty arguments or evidence, and other vapidities.   Private revelations and private insights immune to some kind of logical confirmation are interesting as anecedotes or clarifications of why one thinks something; but they are hardly what can be used to score a point in a discussion.  SEE ALSO R236.html.

     There was a time when people were taught how to discuss issues (and perhaps those on debate teams still are).  But when you look at some of the lists, you wonder whether such teaching exists at all in a day of equality of class grades, etc.   Why should it matter?  It matters if truth matters.  If you have relativistic idea of truth (other than of truth's being relative to the axioms of a paradigm) and hold that those who in the context of a clear-cut difference say that "X is true or right" and those who contend that "X is wrong" are "saying the same thing," there is no point in getting in a discussion seeking the truth.   This is not to say that there are matters on which one can be right about X in one respect and wrong about X in another.  (That's the basis of scholastic argumentation--the distinguo.)  But that should not be confused with "we are saying the same thing" without considering the "respects" in which something is being asserted or denied.  Where truth doesn't matter, most discussions are a waste of time--just an exchange of pleasantries or the converse.

    Truth is worthy of the human mind and of human discussion.  Much can depend on getting it right.  Truth is available at the finite level on many issues.  St. Gregory Palamãs abolished Barlaam's philistinism from Orthodox discussions, while at the same time strengthening the Orthodox stance on not trying to use reason to analyse infinite Mysteries.  He allowed more than strictly apophatic points, but clarified the tradition and how to approach it in ways that remain valuable.  One can say that there is nothing illogical as such in affirming (distinguo!) that there is one God and three divine Persons--the way it would be illogical to say in the same breath that there are three Gods  and that there is one God--or that there are three divine Persons and that there is only one divine Person.  

LIVING ON SLOGANS / MANTRAS

SEE ALSO R121     

      Experience shows that there are , unfortunately, no few people who substitute slogans for thinking.  Some I have known could pull out of a set of perhaps a score of trusty slogans one for any and every occasion.  Though it is in the nature of axioms or definitions that theyare invulnerable to being questioned, slogans treated as arguments that settle a given matter are a feeble way to argue.  One is not saying that a given slogan-like expression can be useful in making a well-argued point more vivid and convincing; but that is different from treating the slogan itself as an argument.  "Putting the cart before the horse" is a simple and indeed vivid way of saying that someone has got his deduction backwards or upside-down.  There is no point in boring the reader with the name for this fallacy in logic here.
     But what about three-valued logic?  Which kind is worth trying out?  The kind that says the middle value (call it "x" or plus-minus) of a given criterion or feature is neither of what the two opposed values are--in which case it is neutral--or whether it somehow includes both of them . . . the more parlous choice in most thinkable situations, since it makes the positive and negative values of a criterion non-exclusive . . . in which case, the alleged criterion is not really a criterion.   Can one  of three values, especially the middle value, be gradient?  There is no a priori reason why not.  But applying ternary logic to the Trinity would  have its hazards if there are only two items--Essence and Person.  The Orthodox see many such things in a three-fold manner; cf. the Trinitarian distinction of Essence, Energy, and Hypostasis.  Of course, these are not three values of ONE criterion; yet they can (as in the case of the LOGOS) speak of a Unity of Being.  While proceeding with caution, one should not exclude ex hypothesi different ways of affirming traditional truths in our time--which is not equivalent to declining to accept what has always been what truly IS; it would only be adding a further (finite)  perspective on what is.  For all of that, it would be a hazardous enough course not to be recommended.  It would require a stronger stomach and mind than most of us have--and more discretion, or else the converse:  more devil-may-care indiscretion.
     There are many issues here that are valuable for the search for truth.  Recent studies of neurological messaging have shown that neural transmissions may not be simply binary l or 0--on or off.  But all such approaches must be carefully evaluated if they are brought in.  A ternary criterion can increase the complexity of an assertion exponentially.  One th'other hand, is it simpler to say that A is plus-[criterion], B is x-[criterion], and C is minus-[criterion] than to say that A is plus both of two criteria--Q and W; B is plus criterion Q and minus criterion W; and C is minus both criteria.   One should not decide the matter simply on analytical simplicity or in terms of some axiom about criteria, but in terms of whether there exists a D (describable as minus criterion Q and plus criterion W) or not.  If such a D is not possible, then a single ternary-valued criterion might be selected.  If D exists, that would not work.  But in all of this, the existence of gradient criteria with > or < values should not be arbitrarily excluded.
      Finally, if things can be stated implicationally (as what fasting prohibition involves which other and so on up the line), it is intellectually simpler to learn that one set of principles than a list for each of the fasting times in the calendar.  

CATEGORY-CONFUSIONS IN RELIGIOUS DISCUSSIONS

     It is outside of the scope of science to determine whether the cosmos was created by a God or not.  Various scientists point out that they can only understand how (not why or by what external Agent) the comos began and developed from then on  They can argue whether the ongoing development of the world has been haphazard or planned  and designed . . . and things of that sort.  But it would be beyond their purview--a category confusion--to question the Orthodox view that the LOGOS constantly re-creates the world at every instant, making it a bit different from what has gone before.   All they can say against this idea is that they see no need for it or something of the sort.
    It is a category confusion to fail to keep the axioms and definitions (a religion's paradigm) that determine one's beliefs and practices separate from the conclusions (mathêmata or didaché (with didágmata; dídaxis is the doing) "doctrines, teachings") that devolve from those presuppositions.  See also point 17 above.  It is the result of a category confusion to try to prove the falsity of teachings in a paradigm other than the one on which a teaching is based and conformed to, since there is no continuity between paradigms.  What is true in our paradigm may not be true in y'all's, or conversely.  The Papal idea that the Latins' novel teachings have evolved or developed out of kernel present in early Christianity cannot be sustained, since quite new paradigms were derived in Western Europe from the Islamic Aristotle of Cordova--and these lacked or misapplied  concepts basic to the Greek New Testament.  It is an ignorant waste of time to discuss (e.g. at interfaith meetings) the ideas of one paradigm in terms of the categories and presuppositions of a different paradigm.
    It is a category confusion to speak of the physical inheritance of a moral quality like guilt or sin.  Unless one is a Gnostic, one cannot call nature (human nature or any other) sinful.  What is  physical (ontological) is different from what is  moral (volitional) . . .  Salvation is ontological for the Orthodox but juridical for Western Christianity.
     It is a category confusion to call human-directed activities as "worship," though this is common among Denominationists.  Worship is directed exclusively to God (it does not include prayers for human needs, let alone sermons, readings, teachings directed to humans); it is doxological and fundamentally a return of a (perfect) part of creation to God as an acknowledgement of his ownership and dominion over all.  In discussions of sacrifice, it is a category confusion to confuse the offering of what is offered with any prior immolation; the essence of sacrifice is offering, not immolating.  It is a category confusion to say that an offering cannot be repeated, simply because an immolation cannot be repeated.  (And failure to see that it is Christ IN HIS MEMBERS offering Himself in the divine Liturgy is paradigm blindness.)   If Worship  (latreía) is directed to God and veneration (douleía) is given to holy people and holy objects, times, place, it is a silly category confusion to call veneration "worship" or "idolatry" represents a grave category confusion . . . especially when this is done by those lacking veneration and having an untenable (human-oriented) view of what Worship is..
      While not a category confusion, the encyclopedias' habit of describing Orthodoxy primarily in terms of Church government (polity) and history (and even size) or in terms of how it differs from Western Christianity or with inept terminology ("seven sacraments," when the number of Mysteries has not been defined and includes what Latins call "sacramentals")  reflects an inappropriate Western classificatory mentality . . . which is a bit different from a true category confusion.   Such summaries should rather focus on the Orthodox phrónema, the Orthodox paradigm, Orthodox beliefs, Orthodox Worship, and Orthodox piety.  While it is proper to point out that Orthodoxy is a "national" religion in some nations, that should be marginal to the main concerns.
     Just as many Denominationists fall into a category-confusion between revelation and the words that express a revelation--words of the Greek Bible and (the Orthodox would add) tradition--many Orthodox confuse doctrinal development with dogmatic non-development—the changelessness of truth (under specific conditions when it is a truth about an occurrence at a certain time and/or in a certain place).  This confusion is based on a confusion of dogma (a dyqnamis) and a doctrine or teaching (an energy).  Doctrines and teachings, whether true or false, have been taking place throughout the history of the Orthodox Church.  But what was true about a given dogma was true before any doctrine clarifying it came forth as well as afterwards.  Likewise, what was false before a given doctrine (true or false) emerged remained true or false afterwards.     
     There are many other category confusions among those who discuss religion.

BRIEFLY ON PARADIGMS IN THE

FOREGOING CONNECTION

    Fruitful as paradigm analysis has been in science and sociology, one should avoid it if one is not clear that the axioms, premises, or assumptions that constitute a paradigm are generally invulnerable to arguments.  (i) One can, on the basis of common experience try to persuade oneself or someone else that  a proposed paradigms accords or disaccords with real experience.  A valid logical use of paradigm analysis involves (ii) showing that at any time before which a given paradigm existed (say, one of the Western Christian paradigms invented in the thirteenth century),  it would not have been possible for a person at a given earlier time (say a writer in the Apostolic Age) to have been thinking in ways according with the axioms of the not-yet-invented paradigm.  This approach is decisive in assailing the claim that a paradigm which can be proved to have been invented in the thirteenth century is consistent with what was held by the Apostles in the first century.  All of this is to say that a paradigm argument needs to be carefully managed.   
     And don't fall into the error of confusing a paradigm argument with rationalism.  Paradigms are pre-rational and for the most part not even present in one's consciousness--even though they determine what one can and cannot admit as true.
     The categories of a language constitute a paradigm of sorts; to a high degree, they dictate how we divide up reality.  All languages can (in time) say anything that can be said; but they cannot say it is the same way--in the same relational (sytematic) context.  Greek invites one to understand a feminine noun ending in -sis (-tis after -s-) to represent an energizing and its  parallel neuter relative to  represent the result of that energizing--in a way that Western languages do not in themselves do.  English and most languages have a morphology that invites us to relate a causal verb to its cause--i.e. its agent or instrument . . .  by adding -er (or, orthographcially, Latinate -[t]or) in English . . . or with perhaps varying connotations, -ster.   One language forces us to say whether an act was instantaneous or non-instaneous--durative, habitual, characteristic, or whatever; others allow us to makes such distinctions but do not force them on everything we say.  English makes a differences between "Everyone DID that" and  "["It is true that" or "It will turn out that"] everyone HAS DONE that."   Most languages would not force us to make that (exochronous or other marked-time) distinction, though all would allow us to make it with some circumlocution or other.
      How is this related to (ii) above?   Since a Christian would hardly doubt that God ordained the time and place for the LOGOS's assumption of human nature because of the suitability of that place at that time, it is legitimate and even salutary for the finite mind (without being presumptious or arrogating to oneself the ability to read the divine mind) to try to understand what the suitability of Jesus's being born in a region where Hebrew culture met head-on with Hellenistic culture--not Bethlehem so much as Galilee, where his early life was spent.  One thinks specifically of the city of Tiberias on the sea.  If such a cultural meeting occurred at no other time and place the way it did there, it is worth asking oneself why Galilee at the time in question was so appropriate for the Savior's up-bringing..  
     To understand the situation, we need to note the prevailing outlook of the two cultures that met in Galilee.  Hebrew culture was appreciative of time and matter where Hellenistic (Gnostic) culture was rejective of time and matter; and Hebrew (and Islamic and doubtless Punic) culture was shot through with juridicalism, whereas Hellenism emphasized being or ontology in the specific post-Aristotelian sense of the relation of dýnamis (potential) to energy (actualization).  The three established forms of Christianity put the elements of Hebrew and Hellenistic culture together in different (and novel) ways.  The Apostles (as revealed in the Greek New Testament) made energy the interpretative form of matter that was Hebraïcally presented.  This is called incarnationalism, sacramentalism, or mystericism. 
     The paradigms invented a dozen or more centuries later put the elements together in other ways.   The Reformers simply inverted the Apostolic (and Orthodox)  paradigm, forming the Gnostic content of Hellenism (and Luther's devotio moderna) with the juridical form of Judaism (and Luther's will-first via moderna).  Both of Luther's fifteenth-century modernisms promoted a radical individualism, one unknown to either ancient culture.  Earlier, the Latins had developed a paradigm just as evidently derived from Islamic Cordova philosophy and theology as Reformation thinking was to be.   (Aquinas quotes the pre-Cordovan and Cordovan Arab philosophers and  the Cordovan Jews who wrote in Arabic as authoritative on matters of form--not on content--just as clearly as Luther was indebted to the exegesis of Nicholas of Lyra.  The last-named was  very dependent on the Arab-writing Jew of Cordova named Avicebron.  Luther's exegetical source was so evident  that the wags of the day sang a jingle that has come down to us.  It said that Luther would not've saltasset "danced" had [Nicholas of ] Lyra not lyrasset "strummed on his lyre.")   The Latin paradigm had a juridical form like that of the Reformation but not a Gnostic content; its content was more like that of the original Orthodox paradigm.  The juridicality of both Western paradigms was not due simply to Cordovan form.  It began with the four founders of Western theology (Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine of ex-Punic Carthage and Ambrose of Milan--each one of whom was a lawyer, a law-student, a court orator, or a judge) and  was capped by Germanic (Lombard) writers like Anselm, Peter Lombardus, and Gratian as well as the Germanic popes between 1100 and 1300 (who almost without exception were lawyers).   Luther was a nominalist; Calvin was an ex-student of civil law.  The will-first basis of Luther's training and convictions allowed him to espouse a virtual righteousness that Aquinas had not made explicit; yet Aquinas himself espoused a virtual (conceptual or intentional) Unity of a believer with the ontologically imparticipable uncreated Essence of God.  That differs slightly from the Reformers's will-based covenantal Unity with God.

     CONCLUSION:  To pretend that the Mediæval and Renaissance theologies stand in continuity with the Greek-language Apostolic paradigm is simply not credible.  The cognitive discontinuity of six or seven centuries of illiterate and barbarous Dark Ages in the West make the notion untenable.  And an analysis of the paradigms themselvesreveals the cognitive discontinuity and incompatibility of West with and the East of the New Testament authors and Orthodoxy ever since.  Paradigms would not be different paradigms if an idea in one stood in (derivational) continuity with an idea in another.

MINI-ESSAY

        I have lived in a world in which I thought most literate people either resided in or were acquainted with--one in which the way one scores a point is to bring forward facts, meet the other's arguments, and/or bring forward arguments in support of what one asserts.  Of course, an argument based on axioms I don't accept will not go far with me, and conversely, however logical adeduction from such axioms may be.    Who doubts that Augustine in His "On the Trinity" posits two, or by some counts three, axioms not accepted in the East?  

     It is not possible to show those axioms are wrong; for, like definitions, axioms are acts of the will, neither provable nor disprovable--though susceptible to arguments of relevance, congruence with reality, etc., etc. That's the way thinking people view thinking. So it is no more possible for someone to convince me of error if one bases the proof on axioms I don't accept than it is for me to convince another with a parallel strategy. We would simply be wasting our time to try that gambit. 
     The Orthodox and Western Christians inhabit different axiomatic thought worlds. This means that talk across the boundary between the two is cross-talk, as Fr. John Romanides so relevantly pointed out. Now if both parties in a discussion are Orthodox, one might think we are in the same thought world.  But it ain't necessarily so!  Anyone who glances at Moghila's Confession of Faith and much of like ilk from ca. 1645 till well into the 20th century (and even now, as in the Zoe Movement) can see that that thought world is not in the same paradigm as the Patristic thought world.  Fr. John showed it and in so doing almost did not get his doctorate.  If we cannot convince or disprove one another's contentions (which is something different from not even bothering to allege reasons in simply making assertions that such-and-such is so, . . . and from statements about how we feel about something), then there are grounds for wondering if we inhabit the same paradigm.  The Creator is the LOGOS "Reason" and SOPHIA Wisdom of GOD according to St. John (and Philo and Plato, etc.) and, respectively, according to St. Paul and the Wisdom Books of the OT.  St. John of Damaskós prefixed a couple of centuries (sets of 100 chapters) concerning right thinking to his influential EXACT EXPOSITION of Orthodox belief.  The least we can do is offer some sort of reasoning when we put some idea forward.  If, or when, I say something wrong and someone cites the Patristic consensus against me, I have to draw in my horns.  Whether a given writer has said things based on assumptions not part of the Orthodox Patristic consensus, the same comportment should be binding.  

     But first and last, an assertion is not an argument; and a deduction from premises not held in common is not probative or remotely conclusive.  Ask anyone who is versed in debate (Aritotle's rhetoric), in educated rational discourse, or whatever more fancy name one can use, will say the same thing as far as my experience has shown.  Differences of opinion may be due to different feelings, different wishes, different aims or purposes, or different axiomatic presuppositions--or just different facts.  It is necessary to determine which sort of differences there are in order to know whether it is worth arguing--and if so, which difference is to be addressed.

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