What's true for the part is true for the whole.
What's true for one is true for everyone.
What's true for Jurriaan is true in general.
All instances of the fallacy of composition.
What I object to is the *personalization* of social-political-
economic questions. You, like everyone else, have your own
personal experiences. Your continued reference to personal
experiences, including your social life, should not form the
basis of a serious discussion of social questions. These are
social questions and not merely individual ones. They often
introduce unnecessary, irrelevant, emotional, subjective,
considerations. There is also a problem of bias - generally
in the direction of individualism and voluntarism.
> Now, in reality Jerry, our dispute has nothing to do directly with either
> fallacy. You, as the self-proclaimed, patronising Legislator of Logic, just
> start accusing me a "fallacy of composition" in order to evade my argument,
What argument? You seriously want me to discuss your 'concrete example'?
The point is that whatever did or didn't happen (although I'm inclined to
believe that it happened more or less the way you describe) it can not
be taken as evidence of your mythical "Marxist Exploiting Class". There are
many who swear that they saw the Loch Ness monster too but we wouldn't
accept their perceptions as concrete evidence of Nessie.
> Why I mention the fallacy of composition is, that the ideology of Marxism
> (in various variants) in fact utilizes these fallacies all the time, even
> although you are not aware of it: for example, just because e.g. Mao,
> Stalin, Trotsky and Pol Pot were brutal dictators, does not mean that there
> is anything at all wrong at all with "Marxism as a whole" (sic.).
I'm not aware of it? LOL!
Actually, historically, the more common fallacy for Marxists is the
fallacy of division: i.e. the fallacy of believing that what is true for
the whole is true for the parts. Whenever there is a discussion of
concrete case studies and historical events, one can see Marxists who apply
this fallacy, most commonly in the following form: they assume that what is
the case in general historically is also the case in a particular instance.
Frequently, recognition that there is temporal and spatial variation in
historical trends is lacking. In other words, there is a tendency to assume
that a kind of a grand historical narrative applies in all instances. Or,
at least, there is the presumption that this is so. We see the fallacy of
division at work in many Marxian explanations for the current crisis.
> And that is, consistently, how the "dialectics" of Jerry Levy
> operate.
You should pay more attention to what people are actually saying.
You often impute motivations - and associations - to me which are wildly
off-base. Indeed, they are often laughable. I generally don't reply (just
as I won't now) because I prefer to stick to the issues and not get
side-tracked in a discussion of personalities and individuals.
In solidarity, Jerry
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Received on Sat Jun 6 07:24:29 2009
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