The cultural "logical" fallacies of Indian people
It takes a big expense of Intellectualism (=search of moral values in a action/thought/et al) to differentiate between Hypocrisy and Duality. There are things which have fundamentally a dual nature. It is not a Hypocrisy if a person is changing is views/decisions in accordance with the dual nature of the concept. There are a lot of specious arguments floating in the public domain which need intellectual scrutiny to test their true position between Hypocrisy and Duality.
Here is list of cultural logical fallacies among our people in the public domain;
1) हमाम में तो सब नंगे हैं (Humaam mein toh sab nange hain):
Spoken often in context of endorsement of Corruption and mal-practises, the speaker intends to highlight that no body demand corruption because in a strict sense,(as he observes it), everybody is corrupt and involved in mal-practises in one way or the other.
The mistake in the logic of this statement is about the Duality involved in such issues as Perfection, Moral Philosophy, Values search. There is no denial in the truth of the statement, but it only turn out to be a half-truth, because the need for a value-filled world, of corruption-free honest world is also a genuine public need only. So whereas an individual is not expected to be fair, honest, unbiased, the societal need is always to demand honesty and transparency. The individual need as against the social need build up the Duality.
2) Virendra Sehwaag's recent comment : "Captain is as good as his team".
This statement from our class batsman is but a half-truth. Sometimes when the big thinkers asks us to 'look at the big picture', the untrained eyes among us never understand the meaning of it. A complete truth, sometimes, is composed to two very opposite views. Think our the truth of these statements: a) A team even without the best of players, can still be the best. b) The best of players still cannot make up the best team. c) Captaincy gives that little edge which helps make a best team. d) Good rated captain alone cannot make a team 'best' if the players are not willing to co-operate.
So what should we make out from this remark which has been spoken in reference to MS Dhoni. a) Dhoni is the best captain, because India won the world cup.
b) Dhoni's best captaincy alone is not enough to make India win the world cup.
3) "Rs 20L car to each MLA will help the development of his constituency."
Spoken in reference to UP Chief Minister's recent decision (which he had to roll back after the media/public pressure), the argument in defence of this statement was that a car will help the MLAs reach and inspect their constituency better and that is how each constituency will see development.
Is it not possible to connect each issue and action we do in our life with the subjective issues of public domain: namely , the safety, the security and the development. there is never a final verdict on what is connected , or not connect-able , to the issues of Safety, Security and Development. Consider the Arguments: "A female escort to each MLA will help him do his work better and keep his mind cool , which will contribute towards the development of his constituency. So the State of UP will grant expenses to each MLA to keep a women 'escort'. " (Women organisation , please overlook this proposition for the sake of hypothetical argument towards deriving a greater truth.)
The greater truth is that one should be very careful when justifying a decision through the perspective of safety, security and public's welfare. Both, positive actions and the negative actions, have equal prospects of finding a justification.
4) "Fundamental Rights are not absolute".
Spoken by our dear next in the queue President, Pranab mukherjee, it seems that he like to ignore another fundamental truth that nations , at this extreme point of Fundamental Rights losing their strength, also become vulnerable. People with Right of Self-Determination have a right to protest. If a nation thinks of dissolving the fundamental rights on the arguments of 'threat to the state', remember that God did not create any nation on earth. It was humans who made it, and so humans have a right to disintegrate.
The American Jurisprudence talks of the Fundamental Rights not being absolute in a very subtle natural reasoning, that it may happen that one fundamental right can clash with another depending of an accepted way of categorizing people, which makes the fundamental right not an absolute. Such reasoning are more appropriate as they rhyme with the lessons of Natural Science that most things in Nature are not absolute. There is no political reasoning for why fundamental rights are not absolute, it is just a way of nature that nothing is absolute, except the speed of light.
5) Rights and wrongs are subject to statistical studies. "Till then, be a party to evolution."
This one came from a friend of mine in his response to my FB wall post related to how Safety and Security arguments can destroy the reasoning ability of people (http://imsingh1999-mannu.blogspot.in/2012/07/safety-and-security-related-argumenta.html). His arguments , exactly mentioned in the above blog, centred around the non-absoluteness of Rights and Wrongs. The fallacy we Indians have is that although the Rights and Wrongs have never been conclusively established in any society, the democratic societies have definitely set the methods on how to reach to those Rights and Wrongs. And how should one be handling those arguments which attempt to check on the Righteousness and Wrongness of these methods itself, **as these too should not be absolute if nothing is absolute**. For example what if some one begins to question that moral propriety of the Transparency, Accountability, Public trial as the best method of fair-and-just trial ? 'There should never be a suppression of the Enquiring minds of people', I have myself argued on that. But would it not be an abuse of the argument if people stop reading History, the revolutions in the past which have led to evolution of certain binding framework of democratic societies , and jump back question that binding frame work itself. Ignorance or Abuse of the freedoms of democracy to kill the democracy itself ??
There are subjective issues where rights and wrongs are based in Statistical Data. These data, in turn, are dependent on free and fair reporting. What would happen to the Statistical answers of someone discourages free reporting, record keeping, by questioning the basic methods of Justice in a Democratic Society, and disposes away the eventual establishing of the Rights and Wrongs to the forces of nature under the control of Evolution ?? How very surly abuse of the theories and concepts of Evolution as a scientific course ? Standard Democrats will have to contest with the non-standard democrat about what is Evolution and how human intervention , and upto what degree is expected in the process of evolution for the betterment of this world?? there is a lot of fatalism in the non-standard Democrat when he assigns away the search of Rights and Wrongs to the forces of nature, the Evolution . I wonder if he would sulk or he would not if a wrong outcome happens centuries later in this surrender of today? If such surrender are not antithetical to that march towards perfections which binds all humans into one bond called the society or a nation ? if Evolution is necessarily about survival of the best, of the skill of reproduction in high numbers is also a 'skill' worth making your genes to survive. And will such a survival lead to that travel of mankind by space shuttles to other planets when the entire earth will see a catastrophe ?? My friend leaves me with lot to ponder on how to reason it out with him as to what is 'basically', 'fundamentally' mistaken in his knowledge which is resulting is such abuse of the big and respectable concepts as the Evolution.
Here is list of cultural logical fallacies among our people in the public domain;
1) हमाम में तो सब नंगे हैं (Humaam mein toh sab nange hain):
Spoken often in context of endorsement of Corruption and mal-practises, the speaker intends to highlight that no body demand corruption because in a strict sense,(as he observes it), everybody is corrupt and involved in mal-practises in one way or the other.
The mistake in the logic of this statement is about the Duality involved in such issues as Perfection, Moral Philosophy, Values search. There is no denial in the truth of the statement, but it only turn out to be a half-truth, because the need for a value-filled world, of corruption-free honest world is also a genuine public need only. So whereas an individual is not expected to be fair, honest, unbiased, the societal need is always to demand honesty and transparency. The individual need as against the social need build up the Duality.
2) Virendra Sehwaag's recent comment : "Captain is as good as his team".
This statement from our class batsman is but a half-truth. Sometimes when the big thinkers asks us to 'look at the big picture', the untrained eyes among us never understand the meaning of it. A complete truth, sometimes, is composed to two very opposite views. Think our the truth of these statements: a) A team even without the best of players, can still be the best. b) The best of players still cannot make up the best team. c) Captaincy gives that little edge which helps make a best team. d) Good rated captain alone cannot make a team 'best' if the players are not willing to co-operate.
So what should we make out from this remark which has been spoken in reference to MS Dhoni. a) Dhoni is the best captain, because India won the world cup.
b) Dhoni's best captaincy alone is not enough to make India win the world cup.
3) "Rs 20L car to each MLA will help the development of his constituency."
Spoken in reference to UP Chief Minister's recent decision (which he had to roll back after the media/public pressure), the argument in defence of this statement was that a car will help the MLAs reach and inspect their constituency better and that is how each constituency will see development.
Is it not possible to connect each issue and action we do in our life with the subjective issues of public domain: namely , the safety, the security and the development. there is never a final verdict on what is connected , or not connect-able , to the issues of Safety, Security and Development. Consider the Arguments: "A female escort to each MLA will help him do his work better and keep his mind cool , which will contribute towards the development of his constituency. So the State of UP will grant expenses to each MLA to keep a women 'escort'. " (Women organisation , please overlook this proposition for the sake of hypothetical argument towards deriving a greater truth.)
The greater truth is that one should be very careful when justifying a decision through the perspective of safety, security and public's welfare. Both, positive actions and the negative actions, have equal prospects of finding a justification.
4) "Fundamental Rights are not absolute".
Spoken by our dear next in the queue President, Pranab mukherjee, it seems that he like to ignore another fundamental truth that nations , at this extreme point of Fundamental Rights losing their strength, also become vulnerable. People with Right of Self-Determination have a right to protest. If a nation thinks of dissolving the fundamental rights on the arguments of 'threat to the state', remember that God did not create any nation on earth. It was humans who made it, and so humans have a right to disintegrate.
The American Jurisprudence talks of the Fundamental Rights not being absolute in a very subtle natural reasoning, that it may happen that one fundamental right can clash with another depending of an accepted way of categorizing people, which makes the fundamental right not an absolute. Such reasoning are more appropriate as they rhyme with the lessons of Natural Science that most things in Nature are not absolute. There is no political reasoning for why fundamental rights are not absolute, it is just a way of nature that nothing is absolute, except the speed of light.
5) Rights and wrongs are subject to statistical studies. "Till then, be a party to evolution."
This one came from a friend of mine in his response to my FB wall post related to how Safety and Security arguments can destroy the reasoning ability of people (http://imsingh1999-mannu.blogspot.in/2012/07/safety-and-security-related-argumenta.html). His arguments , exactly mentioned in the above blog, centred around the non-absoluteness of Rights and Wrongs. The fallacy we Indians have is that although the Rights and Wrongs have never been conclusively established in any society, the democratic societies have definitely set the methods on how to reach to those Rights and Wrongs. And how should one be handling those arguments which attempt to check on the Righteousness and Wrongness of these methods itself, **as these too should not be absolute if nothing is absolute**. For example what if some one begins to question that moral propriety of the Transparency, Accountability, Public trial as the best method of fair-and-just trial ? 'There should never be a suppression of the Enquiring minds of people', I have myself argued on that. But would it not be an abuse of the argument if people stop reading History, the revolutions in the past which have led to evolution of certain binding framework of democratic societies , and jump back question that binding frame work itself. Ignorance or Abuse of the freedoms of democracy to kill the democracy itself ??
There are subjective issues where rights and wrongs are based in Statistical Data. These data, in turn, are dependent on free and fair reporting. What would happen to the Statistical answers of someone discourages free reporting, record keeping, by questioning the basic methods of Justice in a Democratic Society, and disposes away the eventual establishing of the Rights and Wrongs to the forces of nature under the control of Evolution ?? How very surly abuse of the theories and concepts of Evolution as a scientific course ? Standard Democrats will have to contest with the non-standard democrat about what is Evolution and how human intervention , and upto what degree is expected in the process of evolution for the betterment of this world?? there is a lot of fatalism in the non-standard Democrat when he assigns away the search of Rights and Wrongs to the forces of nature, the Evolution . I wonder if he would sulk or he would not if a wrong outcome happens centuries later in this surrender of today? If such surrender are not antithetical to that march towards perfections which binds all humans into one bond called the society or a nation ? if Evolution is necessarily about survival of the best, of the skill of reproduction in high numbers is also a 'skill' worth making your genes to survive. And will such a survival lead to that travel of mankind by space shuttles to other planets when the entire earth will see a catastrophe ?? My friend leaves me with lot to ponder on how to reason it out with him as to what is 'basically', 'fundamentally' mistaken in his knowledge which is resulting is such abuse of the big and respectable concepts as the Evolution.
sampe segithunya orang india,,hehehehehehe
ReplyDeletesampe keliru gthu