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KDU

What type of fallacy is this? (Featuring Bertrand Russell)

Someone on Quora asked the question: "Why was Bertrand Russell so critical of Nietzsche?". One of the responses especially stood out to me as it was written by a professor of law with a BA in philosophy. You would expect someone with those credentials to have a well thought-out answer; however, it is mostly a collection of personal attacks against Bertrand. If you're interested, the full response can be found here

For this question, I am specifically concerned with the following excerpt:

"Unfortunately, for all his literary fluency, Bertie was a failed philosopher and the most he accomplished as a mathematician is providing us with a formalism which requires at least 450 pages of close notation before reaching '2 + 2 = 4'. Extraordinary rigour in the service of triviality is NOT what philosophy is about."

Here, the arguer is trying to frame Bertrand's work in a way that makes it seem unduly trivial. It strikes me as an obvious fallacy, but I can't put my finger on it. Perhaps it's just an ad hominem, but it also reminds me of those arguments that try to reduce a complex phenomenon into 'nothing more' than an interaction of its parts. For example: "Music is nothing special. It's just a bunch of soundwaves entering the eardrums and being interpreted by the brain." 

What does the Logically Fallacious community think? I'm looking forward to your replies.

Thanks!

asked on Tuesday, Oct 19, 2021 08:40:00 AM by KDU

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Shawn
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Sounds to me like a clever ad hominem attack, along with an unsupported claim. As you stated, there are those who make arguments that try to reduce a complex phenomenon into 'nothing more' than an interaction of its parts. 

answered on Wednesday, Oct 20, 2021 09:40:31 AM by Shawn

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TrappedPrior (RotE)
3

"Unfortunately, for all his literary fluency, Bertie was a failed philosopher and the most he accomplished as a mathematician is providing us with a formalism which requires at least 450 pages of close notation before reaching '2 + 2 = 4'. Extraordinary rigour in the service of triviality is NOT what philosophy is about."

Unsupported claim and opinion I guess - where's the evidence he pretentiously pontificated about how 2 + 2 = 4? Without that, it's an unverified (but testable) positive statement.

The implicit argument could be that Russell's work is trivial, but this would then be a case of the premise (writing 450 pages to reach the conclusion 2 + 2 = 4) being true or false.

It  would  be fallacious if it tried to dismiss him out of hand entirely.

answered on Tuesday, Oct 19, 2021 11:57:28 AM by TrappedPrior (RotE)

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KDU writes:

Thanks for your reply.

After sleeping on it, I am now in agreement with you. What I saw to be a fallacy last night I now see to be a non-fallacious (yet probably dishonest) mischaracterisation of Bertrand's work. In other words, he hasn't committed a fallacy - he is just wrong.

He is most likely referring to Bertrand Russell's Principia Mathematica . In which case, it was about evaluating the logical foundations of mathematics and attempting to solve paradoxes in set theory (among other things). Demonstrating that '1 + 1 = 2' comprised a section of this work - not the conclusion of it!

posted on Tuesday, Oct 19, 2021 08:47:49 PM
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Monique Z writes:

Russel's Principia Mathematica does in fact spend hundreds of pages proving that 1+1=2. Because, put crudely, the point of the book is to demonstrate that math can also be understood in logical terms. It's a pretty basic and not very exciting concept, but something that was completely unexplored until that point.

posted on Wednesday, Oct 20, 2021 07:59:08 AM
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TrappedPrior (RotE) writes:
[To Monique Z]

Note what OP quotes:

"Unfortunately, for all his literary fluency, Bertie was a failed philosopher and the most he accomplished as a mathematician is providing us with a formalism which requires at least 450 pages of close notation before reaching '2 + 2 = 4'. Extraordinary rigour in the service of triviality is NOT what philosophy is about."

It implies that spending hundreds of pages to prove a 'trivial' sum is 'the most' that he accomplished as a mathematician. Even if it is part of what he accomplished, that 'most' makes the criticism unfair because the premise would be false.

Furthermore, as you note, it was something somewhat unexplored until that time (Frege's attempt at proving logicism notwithstanding), so it was hardly a trivial matter.

[ login to reply ] posted on Wednesday, Oct 20, 2021 01:26:25 PM
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Mchasewalker
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I agree that there's no fallacy here.  However unfair it is effectively snarky criticism. 

answered on Tuesday, Oct 19, 2021 12:46:04 PM by Mchasewalker

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