Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

Here.

My beloved Arizona Wildcats (11-3) have moved up to 14th in the ranking.

Live Dates Volume Two (1980).

Propositional form X is the contradictory of propositional form Y (i.e., X and Y are contradictories [of one another]) iff (1) it is impossible for both X and Y to be true and (2) it is impossible for both X and Y to be false.

Example from everyday life: 'Virtue can be taught' is the contradictory of 'Virtue cannot be taught'

Example from categorical logic: 'No S are P' is the contradictory of 'Some S are P'

Example from propositional logic: 'p • q' is the contradictory of 'p ﬤ ~q'

Example from predicate logic: '(x)~Øx' is the contradictory of '(Ǝx)Øx'

A year ago, I set out my cycling resolution for 2017. As you can see, I kept it. I rode 5,800 miles in 2017. My cycling goal for 2018 is to break my all-time record of 6,288 miles.

Here is Kurt Schlichter's latest column.

Time to celebrate, and I don’t know which of the winners’ parties I’d rather attend. There is the extravaganza for American oligarchs (hedge fund managers, real estate moguls) at Club 21, or President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, or the KGB’s oligarchs with the other kleptocrats at their vodka-drenched bacchanalia in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin.

Since I won’t be invited to any of them, I plan on joining some of my buds for a Bud at the Legion, there to ponder what we may now expect for the continuity of our Social Security and Medicare and further threats to our environment, society and, of course, our democracy.

Happy New Year.

Dean O. Allen

Kansas City

The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 1, 2018

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There are three main ways of making other people support our aims: by compelling them, by persuading them to accept our views, by convincing them of the reasonableness of what we propose. In so far as compulsion involves a resort to brute force we are not here concerned to discuss it. Men may, it is true, be bullied or tortured into behaving as though they accepted a belief which those who have power over them wish to impose upon them. Such outward conformity does not entail belief nor would the use of force fall under the heading of propaganda. In distinguishing between persuading and convincing, as I propose to do, I recognize that I am to some extent departing from the most common usage of these words. There is, however, a clear and important distinction between the process of getting people to agree with us by using non-rational methods and the process of providing them with rational grounds for such agreement. There is not, I believe, any pair of words in common use which clearly mark this distinction. Accordingly, I shall adopt the arbitrary convention that 'convince' is to mean 'to satisfy by rational argument', i.e. by adducing evidence in support of the proposed conclusion. I shall confine the use of the word 'persuasion' to mean 'to bring about the acceptance of a conclusion by methods other than that of offering grounds for rational conviction'. Most people would, I think, say that 'persuasion' covers what I have called 'conviction'. I have admitted that this is a correct usage, but it is inconvenient for my purpose.

(L. Susan Stebbing, Thinking to Some Purpose [Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1939], 80 [italics in original])

Note from KBJ: I use the terms "rational persuasion" and "non-rational persuasion" to mark the distinction that Stebbing marks with "convince" and "persuade." I might add that all rational persuasion, to be effective, must be ad hominem (i.e., to the person) rather than ad rem (to the world). Unless you use premises that I accept, your argument has no effect on me. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that you beg the question against me. To avoid begging the question, one must use premises that are at least as acceptable to one's interlocutor as is the conclusion.