We’ve never heard the best singers, singers that we would enjoy, would enjoy more than we do our favorite performers. Why haven’t we heard them? Why are they not recorded? Why have they never been heard except in their hometown church or local night spots? Many reasons come to mind. For whatever reason, there may be things that they count as more important CDs, celebrity, being professional entertainers twenty-four-seven.
But if they wish they were on the charts, yet have never made it–I know a young man like that like that–the main reason is that they can’t make it on their own. No one can. Becoming a musical star is always a cooperative process. Someone has to write the songs. The songwriter is part of the winning team. The singer himself has to find ways to be heard beyond the local scene. Encouragers are essential. The musical accompaniment is crucial to the process. The quality and professionalism of the recording session and the studio can make all the difference. So can the personality of the singer, her ability to connect, communicate, and to entertain her audience. Showmanship matters.
All of this, however, can be the best. The singer and the band may develop a distinctive and compelling voice, phrasing and style. Yet we will never hear from them unless someone promotes this singer and his recorded songs. Our favorites won out over better performers because they had better producers and marketers. That’s what it takes to succeed (not as a singer, nor as a musician) in the music business. Although all the other components of the process must be in place, in the end, salesmanship wins over everything else. Or perhaps a better way to say it is: salesmanship is what brings it all to us.
The same is true in almost any kind of business.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
There Has To Be a Reason
In the Thurlos’ White Thunder, an apparently random attack has been made on Ella Clah’s life. Of this, the Thurlos write: "The dark side of human nature seldom made sense to her. Malicious behavior all too often existed in defiance of logic." That’s the way it often seems. Things just don’t make sense. Often there appears to be no logical explanation for things that happen or the way people are. But, l as we all know, things are not always what they seem to be; appearance can be deceptive; reality can remain hidden from our eyes and our minds.
When my wife, our daughters, and I moved to Texas thirty-five years ago, I began noticing an unusual, but apparently very popular, bumper sticker: There has to be a reason. This both interested and confused me. It interested me because I am a teacher of logic. Logic is the study of reasoning. I readily agreed that there must be a reason. No matter how enigmatic anything may seem to be, there is a reason for everything. Nothing happens without a cause. But the bumper confused me because that was all it had to say. There was no fine print. There were no images. Just the philosophical statement: There has to be a reason.
I doubted that this was a particularly philosophical town I had moved to. Why would cars by the dozen have a bumper sticker that was merely philosophical. This didn’t make sense to me. The day finally came when, in a parking lot, I saw a lady getting out of a car with the ubiquitous bumper statement. I stepped over and asked her for an explanation.
She said it was to arouse curiosity and cause people like to me to ask for the meaning. The answer was that this was an incomplete statement. It required a living person to complete it. She completed it for me: "There must be a reason why everyone banks at the First National Bank." I guess that was good enough for me; I have banked there as the institution has gone through five different names. At present, it is Bank of America. There must be reasons for these changes.
No, Ellen Clah, the dark side of human behavior, malicious behavior, is neither senseless, not does it defy logic. I’ve said there are reasons for everything. Everything can be understood logically. I found, that for me, logic is both simply and comprehensively understood as: "The study of what follows."
The attempt on her life followed someone’s intentional decision. It could be anything from revenge to part of a rite of initiation into a violent gang. If it was not preceded by some intentional decision, then it was an accident. Accidents, however, follow some kind of failure: carelessness, a break in the steering linkage of a vehicle, or a hunter mistaking her for a deer. Something lay behind it the threat to Inspector Clah’s life. Some perverse premises, or accidental premises led to the conclusion that almost caused her death. She understood none of this at the time, when Clah has done enough investigation, she will understand that someone had a logical reason to want her dead.
The main reason we fail to see the logic in things is that we have our own beliefs and ways of seeing the world, ways that cause us to prejudge what can and cannot make sense. Therefore, we find it hard to realize how much difference the experience of reality can be if people have different beliefs and ways of seeing the world than we do. If we can’t see where they are coming from, many things do seem to defy logic.
Everything is logical, but it always depends on where things are coming from, depends on what premises we are prepared to accept. For instance, the mentally ill commonly think more logically that most of us. The problem is not with their logic, but with their beliefs and the way in which they see the world. If we accepted their premises, we would see how all their behavior makes good sense. The rocket scientist has a different worldview from the safecracker; their actions will follow from that worldview.
If you were to ask me what might be the major premise from which malice and evil arise, I must confess that I left in ultimate mystery. I am prepared to consider the entire dialectic of explanations that have been given. Nonetheless, none of our words of explanation will be the last word. There is more to be said than we can understand. The major premise lies hidden in mystery.
When my wife, our daughters, and I moved to Texas thirty-five years ago, I began noticing an unusual, but apparently very popular, bumper sticker: There has to be a reason. This both interested and confused me. It interested me because I am a teacher of logic. Logic is the study of reasoning. I readily agreed that there must be a reason. No matter how enigmatic anything may seem to be, there is a reason for everything. Nothing happens without a cause. But the bumper confused me because that was all it had to say. There was no fine print. There were no images. Just the philosophical statement: There has to be a reason.
I doubted that this was a particularly philosophical town I had moved to. Why would cars by the dozen have a bumper sticker that was merely philosophical. This didn’t make sense to me. The day finally came when, in a parking lot, I saw a lady getting out of a car with the ubiquitous bumper statement. I stepped over and asked her for an explanation.
She said it was to arouse curiosity and cause people like to me to ask for the meaning. The answer was that this was an incomplete statement. It required a living person to complete it. She completed it for me: "There must be a reason why everyone banks at the First National Bank." I guess that was good enough for me; I have banked there as the institution has gone through five different names. At present, it is Bank of America. There must be reasons for these changes.
No, Ellen Clah, the dark side of human behavior, malicious behavior, is neither senseless, not does it defy logic. I’ve said there are reasons for everything. Everything can be understood logically. I found, that for me, logic is both simply and comprehensively understood as: "The study of what follows."
The attempt on her life followed someone’s intentional decision. It could be anything from revenge to part of a rite of initiation into a violent gang. If it was not preceded by some intentional decision, then it was an accident. Accidents, however, follow some kind of failure: carelessness, a break in the steering linkage of a vehicle, or a hunter mistaking her for a deer. Something lay behind it the threat to Inspector Clah’s life. Some perverse premises, or accidental premises led to the conclusion that almost caused her death. She understood none of this at the time, when Clah has done enough investigation, she will understand that someone had a logical reason to want her dead.
The main reason we fail to see the logic in things is that we have our own beliefs and ways of seeing the world, ways that cause us to prejudge what can and cannot make sense. Therefore, we find it hard to realize how much difference the experience of reality can be if people have different beliefs and ways of seeing the world than we do. If we can’t see where they are coming from, many things do seem to defy logic.
Everything is logical, but it always depends on where things are coming from, depends on what premises we are prepared to accept. For instance, the mentally ill commonly think more logically that most of us. The problem is not with their logic, but with their beliefs and the way in which they see the world. If we accepted their premises, we would see how all their behavior makes good sense. The rocket scientist has a different worldview from the safecracker; their actions will follow from that worldview.
If you were to ask me what might be the major premise from which malice and evil arise, I must confess that I left in ultimate mystery. I am prepared to consider the entire dialectic of explanations that have been given. Nonetheless, none of our words of explanation will be the last word. There is more to be said than we can understand. The major premise lies hidden in mystery.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Conjunctions not Periods
When we write, we must end our sentences with a period, a question mark, or sometimes an exclamation point. Not so with dialectical thinking. Good thinkers punctuate their thinking with conjunctions, commas, colons, semi-colons, dashes, or ellipses. Some writers use up a lot of phrases before they deem it necessary to come to a "full stop," the British term for a period. Nonetheless, they terminate their sentences with an appropriate punctuation mark.
Most English speakers find the German language hard to read. Their sentences tend to be confusingly complex. In the theological writing of Karl Barth, I have found German sentences that traveled more than a full page of fine print before coming to a halt
However, it remains true that writers must use terminal punctuation for their sentences. Good thinkers, however, punctuate their thinking with conjunctions and a variety of punctuational pauses, but never come to a full stop until they encounter the need to act on their thought.
Dialectical thinkers can bring their thought to termination. Thinkers can act. They know the entire point of thinking (unless they are playing intellectual games) is to determine the best course of action at a given point in time and space. But until they must act, their thought continues as they connect one idea to still other considerations.
This is a simple picture of the punctuation of good thinking.
My wife and I are thinking about attending a dulcimer festival in a few weeks, but we question whether we can afford it, however, (please try to read this entire, but admittedly interminable, sentence) for our psychological well-being, it might forestall greater expense in the future, thus we have reserved a room at a Bed and Breakfast establishment for Saturday night–the festival begins on a Friday and concludes Sunday noon–meanwhile my wife is suggesting we fork out the money for another night’s lodging so that we may be there for the entire festival since this is all the vacation we will have this year (have you begun to get the point?), even though we admitted in the beginning that if we go at all, it will take a small bite out of our retirement investment, and that would be a dangerous precedent, especially in a time of major recession (2009) so we don’t know what would be the wise course of action because there are so many things to consider on the one hand, but on the other hand. . . .
We all know that a sentence is a series of words that begins with a capital letter, then proceeds through . . . and ends with full stop punctuation. Remember however, that although sentences must have terminal punctuation, good thoughts end only when they must. Until then they end with conjunctions that link to further considerations. Conjunctions constitute the core of the grammar of the dialectic.
Most English speakers find the German language hard to read. Their sentences tend to be confusingly complex. In the theological writing of Karl Barth, I have found German sentences that traveled more than a full page of fine print before coming to a halt
However, it remains true that writers must use terminal punctuation for their sentences. Good thinkers, however, punctuate their thinking with conjunctions and a variety of punctuational pauses, but never come to a full stop until they encounter the need to act on their thought.
Dialectical thinkers can bring their thought to termination. Thinkers can act. They know the entire point of thinking (unless they are playing intellectual games) is to determine the best course of action at a given point in time and space. But until they must act, their thought continues as they connect one idea to still other considerations.
This is a simple picture of the punctuation of good thinking.
My wife and I are thinking about attending a dulcimer festival in a few weeks, but we question whether we can afford it, however, (please try to read this entire, but admittedly interminable, sentence) for our psychological well-being, it might forestall greater expense in the future, thus we have reserved a room at a Bed and Breakfast establishment for Saturday night–the festival begins on a Friday and concludes Sunday noon–meanwhile my wife is suggesting we fork out the money for another night’s lodging so that we may be there for the entire festival since this is all the vacation we will have this year (have you begun to get the point?), even though we admitted in the beginning that if we go at all, it will take a small bite out of our retirement investment, and that would be a dangerous precedent, especially in a time of major recession (2009) so we don’t know what would be the wise course of action because there are so many things to consider on the one hand, but on the other hand. . . .
We all know that a sentence is a series of words that begins with a capital letter, then proceeds through . . . and ends with full stop punctuation. Remember however, that although sentences must have terminal punctuation, good thoughts end only when they must. Until then they end with conjunctions that link to further considerations. Conjunctions constitute the core of the grammar of the dialectic.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Lie that Reveals Truth
When, back 1958, I entered the Christian ministry, my pastor father advised me to read all kinds of books. He said, "Don’t limit your reading to theology and biblical commentaries; read everything." "But," he said, "don’t waste your time on fiction." Fiction, as everyone knows, is by definition, not true. It was years later, studying philosophy under John Newport, that I learned Daddy was wrong. Novels, fictional short stories, drama, painting, and other art forms do present truth to those of us who have eyes and ears, minds and hearts, to re-cognize them.
As Picasso said, "Art is a lie that reveals the truth." A particular painting, story, or ballad may not represent actual events, persons, or empirical facts of any sort. Yet, in the presence of true art, we find that the art-ifice, awakens us to wider, deeper realities we had never before noticed. Art captures our attention, holds it, and demonstrates to us something of the world with which we are involved.
As we watch The Color Purple, listen to Tevya in Fiddler on the Roof, or read John Grisham, some of us find ourselves wiping tears from the corners of our eyes. On one hand, we are fully aware that none of this is real. Yet, perhaps unconsciously, we are moved by the existence of a human sadness of which we had been only vaguely aware, or never even suspected.
It is fiction, thus artificial, thus not true, but in it we have encountered layers of reality we had never before faced.
Consider the possibility that anywhere, anytime, we may find ourselves face to face with experiences, on the face of which, we find nothing out of the ordinary, but that, if we are sensitive and alert, may awaken us to a more intimate appreciation of the mystery of this thing we call life.
As Picasso said, "Art is a lie that reveals the truth." A particular painting, story, or ballad may not represent actual events, persons, or empirical facts of any sort. Yet, in the presence of true art, we find that the art-ifice, awakens us to wider, deeper realities we had never before noticed. Art captures our attention, holds it, and demonstrates to us something of the world with which we are involved.
As we watch The Color Purple, listen to Tevya in Fiddler on the Roof, or read John Grisham, some of us find ourselves wiping tears from the corners of our eyes. On one hand, we are fully aware that none of this is real. Yet, perhaps unconsciously, we are moved by the existence of a human sadness of which we had been only vaguely aware, or never even suspected.
It is fiction, thus artificial, thus not true, but in it we have encountered layers of reality we had never before faced.
Consider the possibility that anywhere, anytime, we may find ourselves face to face with experiences, on the face of which, we find nothing out of the ordinary, but that, if we are sensitive and alert, may awaken us to a more intimate appreciation of the mystery of this thing we call life.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Not too Late
Tanya Tucker was singing about a most common experience: friends had warned us against dating that person. He is nothing but trouble, we are told. She will break your heart; don’t do it. He is bad news, temper like a yellow jacket and strikes like the snake that he is. But, for reasons we can’t explain even to ourselves, we have already lost our heart to them. That’s why she sings: “Well, it’s a little too late to do the right thing now.”
Hooked on pot before we knew it, took that first drink, lost our virginity, turned in a research paper that we bought off the internet, or even in blind rage killed our husband’s lover. Yes, it’s a little too late to do the right thing now. What’s done can’t be undone. But not really; there is more to it than that.
Considerate thinking--another term for the otohbotoh dialectic–says that we always are in an on-the-other-hand situation. It may be a little too late to do what was the right thing to do at the time, but this time is not that time. The clock has moved on, maybe even the calendar. We did the wrong thing, but that’s in the past. “Now” means that we are in the present.
In the aftermath of any mistake, we have choices available in the now. Something is the right thing to do now. Find it and do it. Like Andrei Gromyko, I have gotten a lot of mileage out of the old Russian proverb: “No matter how long you’ve been traveling the wrong road, turn around.” We face a new set of choices. In the present, in the now, we can turn around and move toward that which is the right way for the now.
This is what Christian repentance is about. We have seen the destruction our habitual philosophy of life led to. We have understood the world one way, have believed that way was the truth, we’ve followed some particular mental map of reality and found it to be a dead-end. Repentance means that we can choose to be reoriented, begin to walk the way that leads to life, believe that Jesus has Reality mapped out right.
No, it is not too late to do the right thing now.
Hooked on pot before we knew it, took that first drink, lost our virginity, turned in a research paper that we bought off the internet, or even in blind rage killed our husband’s lover. Yes, it’s a little too late to do the right thing now. What’s done can’t be undone. But not really; there is more to it than that.
Considerate thinking--another term for the otohbotoh dialectic–says that we always are in an on-the-other-hand situation. It may be a little too late to do what was the right thing to do at the time, but this time is not that time. The clock has moved on, maybe even the calendar. We did the wrong thing, but that’s in the past. “Now” means that we are in the present.
In the aftermath of any mistake, we have choices available in the now. Something is the right thing to do now. Find it and do it. Like Andrei Gromyko, I have gotten a lot of mileage out of the old Russian proverb: “No matter how long you’ve been traveling the wrong road, turn around.” We face a new set of choices. In the present, in the now, we can turn around and move toward that which is the right way for the now.
This is what Christian repentance is about. We have seen the destruction our habitual philosophy of life led to. We have understood the world one way, have believed that way was the truth, we’ve followed some particular mental map of reality and found it to be a dead-end. Repentance means that we can choose to be reoriented, begin to walk the way that leads to life, believe that Jesus has Reality mapped out right.
No, it is not too late to do the right thing now.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
The Quick and Easy Way to Become a Good Thinker
It is not enough to be a critical thinker, or a creative thinker, or a logical thinker, or a scientific thinker; to be a good thinker, in all senses of the term, is to be a considerate thinker. Consideration is the key to greatly improved thinking.
By thinking dialectically you can Improve your thinking immediately. The dialectic, as old as Socrates, can be used easily and effectively in the 21st Century. Like the unfolding of a flower bud, simple and beautiful itself, it opens into new depths of beauty and fragrance.
The dialectic will lead you to:
• Consider other perspectives.
• Consider logical implications.
• Consider who you are.
• Consider who you want to become.
• Consider what is possible, what can actually be done.
You will quickly become:
• A person whose ideas must be reckoned with.
• A person who is rarely blind-sided.
• More honest.
• More respectful and more respected.
• More aware and appreciative.
• More courteous.
__________________
If this is your first visit, some of the early posts on this blog will explain how I use the term, “The Dialectic.”
By thinking dialectically you can Improve your thinking immediately. The dialectic, as old as Socrates, can be used easily and effectively in the 21st Century. Like the unfolding of a flower bud, simple and beautiful itself, it opens into new depths of beauty and fragrance.
The dialectic will lead you to:
• Consider other perspectives.
• Consider logical implications.
• Consider who you are.
• Consider who you want to become.
• Consider what is possible, what can actually be done.
You will quickly become:
• A person whose ideas must be reckoned with.
• A person who is rarely blind-sided.
• More honest.
• More respectful and more respected.
• More aware and appreciative.
• More courteous.
__________________
If this is your first visit, some of the early posts on this blog will explain how I use the term, “The Dialectic.”
Monday, October 8, 2007
How I Go about Thinking
Recently I heard from one of those three or four individuals who read my blogs on a regular basis, and he told me that, as a result, he believed he was beginning to learn how to think. That, coupled with a provocative discussion another fellow–a friend--and I had, is what lies behind today’s blog.
Our intense conversation was stimulating and challenging. My friend and I appeared to have major disagreements about where we were coming from and where we were we believed it took us. We had time to stir things up a bit, but not enough to clarify much, and although as friends we retain a harmonious relationship, we left our discussion without resolving our differences. We will meet again; of that I am confident.
This kind of emotionally charged attempt to reason together is an encounter not uncommon for me. It always drives me, always, to reconsider my own thinking. As I drove home that day, reconsidering my thoughts, I began trying to do a complete review of how my thinking characteristically proceeds. What follows is a provisional statement of the essential elements of my thought processes.
Four reference points are always consulted; yes, and a fifth is also involved. These are linked interdependently.
• The Christian’s Holy Scriptures
• Logic
• Words: their usage, definition, and etymology
• The actual life context of whatever is at issue
• And to be honest, I must include my experience of life as I have seen, felt, and understood it.
Three assumptions are always present in the pattern of my thinking:
• No human statement is ever complete. It matters not whether it a sentence, a speech, an essay, a book, or a political platform that makes the statement, it can never be complete.
• There is always more to be said. Sometimes that more changes everything.
• [Thus] It is always possible that I am wrong.
The scriptures that Christians consider holy, when taken as a whole, are fuzzy. This is why they always have been and will remain, subject to interpretation. Many interpretations exist. Therefore, we can see that Christians have never reasoned from Scripture alone, although many have claimed to do just that.
Logic is equally fuzzy. None of its premises are incontrovertibly true. The reasoning process often is invalid. Inductive logic, by its very nature, cannot produce conclusions that will always prove worthy of our trust.
Trying to settle matters by logic, it is essential that we must understand and accept the premises from which we are reasoning. We must also accept the validity of the reasoning process. Otherwise, we are unlikely to agree on conclusions.
Anytime we disagree with the conclusion of someone’s reasoning, there are only two ways they can be challenged: the truth of their premises and the validity of their reasoning process. This is true at least for deductive reasoning. Since inductive reasoning always goes somewhere beyond the evidence offered in the premises, we may reasonably disagree on the conclusions. The only way to clarify the matter is to reduce it to some deductive pattern. Then it can be subjected to rigorous testing.
The meaning of words lies more in how they are used than in what dictionaries, lexica, or etymologies have to say. Nonetheless, unless we clearly stipulate how we are using language, we cannot stray far from established meaning without jeopardizing our ability to communicate.
_________
Personally:
• Within the Holy Scriptures, my heart, mind, emotions, and soul turn to the following passages as interpretative signposts and as illuminators of the rest of these writings:
--I John 4:16
--Matthew 7:24-27
--John 14:6
--Colossians 1:15-20
--John 1:1-18
--Ephesians 1:10
--2 Corinthians 5:17-21
╶ Revelation 5
• When I turn to logic, my major methods of testing by deduction are:
--The categorical syllogism
--The conditional syllogism
--The dilemma
╶ The reductio ad absurdum
Inductively, I turn to the ways of testing:
--Analogies
--The hypothetico-deductive method
--Simple induction
• I approach the biblical writings using a logic appropriate to stories rather than to strict propositional logic. As story, the Bible speaks with multilayered, multifaceted, and somewhat open-ended meaning.
• Therefore I concur with Jan Zwicky’s judgment that none of it--whether understood as story or parts of the story, or understood in propositional language–can be reduced to unidimensional meaning without misre-presentation of its intention.
• I also concur with Ludwig Wittgenstein when he says, “That which is ragged should be left ragged.” In spite of the ultimate clarity that is visible when we look at the big picture of the biblical theme and when we have acknowledged its unity and harmony, the Bible remains a rather ragged collection of writings.
________________
A couple of ideas that came up in the conversation that stimulated this little essay might clarify some small piece of what I’ve been saying.
1. The word, introvert, was used a few times. It was not clear to me how it was being used; its usage did not fit with my own. The real heart of our concerns was sabotaged by this vagueness. “Contrary to what most people think, an introvert is not simply a person who is shy. In fact, being shy has little to do with being an introvert! Shyness has an element of apprehension, nervousness and anxiety, and while an introvert may also be shy, introversion itself is not shyness. Basically, an introvert is a person who is energized by being alone and whose energy is drained by being around other people.”
In context, “introvert” was used to designate a group that was perceived to represent a representative majority of the population of the United States, if not actually most of the entire human population. The majority were identified as introverts. Among authorities, the well-established fact is that introverts constitute only about 25% of the population.
This ratio seems validated in my own life experience as, for at least sixty-five years, I’ve observed human social interaction. Day in and day out, wherever you go, the great majority of our world, as well as almost any select group, is made up of extroverted people. And, as an introvert myself, I suspect that God intended us to be so, so that we can live in societies rather than in reclusion, seclusion, and isolation.
On the other hand:
Most people believe that an extrovert is a person who is friendly and outgoing. While that may be true, that is not the true meaning of extroversion. Basically, an extrovert is a person who is energized by being around other people. This is the opposite of an introvert who is energized by being alone.
[About.com is a helpful starting point for understanding these two types of human personality.]
2. It was said that Jesus called us–whoever that might be--to be “fishers of men.”
When Jesus actually called a few fishermen to become his special trainees, he did say he would make them “fishers of men.” When, however, he called a collector of governmental revenues, he neither told him that he was to become a “fisher of men,” nor that he was to be a “revenuer for God.” When he called a fellow who was part of a quasi-military group, he said nothing to him about either “fishing” or fighting.
What we can appropriately extrapolate from ancient texts, sacred or otherwise, is another discussion altogether.
_________________
This has been an essay into something of how, in practice, I put my concept of considerate/dialectical thinking to use. It is written to whomever it concerns, and for whatever it is worth.
___________
Now, in private, I will, along these lines, go about analyzing the aforementioned challenging discussion.
Our intense conversation was stimulating and challenging. My friend and I appeared to have major disagreements about where we were coming from and where we were we believed it took us. We had time to stir things up a bit, but not enough to clarify much, and although as friends we retain a harmonious relationship, we left our discussion without resolving our differences. We will meet again; of that I am confident.
This kind of emotionally charged attempt to reason together is an encounter not uncommon for me. It always drives me, always, to reconsider my own thinking. As I drove home that day, reconsidering my thoughts, I began trying to do a complete review of how my thinking characteristically proceeds. What follows is a provisional statement of the essential elements of my thought processes.
Four reference points are always consulted; yes, and a fifth is also involved. These are linked interdependently.
• The Christian’s Holy Scriptures
• Logic
• Words: their usage, definition, and etymology
• The actual life context of whatever is at issue
• And to be honest, I must include my experience of life as I have seen, felt, and understood it.
Three assumptions are always present in the pattern of my thinking:
• No human statement is ever complete. It matters not whether it a sentence, a speech, an essay, a book, or a political platform that makes the statement, it can never be complete.
• There is always more to be said. Sometimes that more changes everything.
• [Thus] It is always possible that I am wrong.
The scriptures that Christians consider holy, when taken as a whole, are fuzzy. This is why they always have been and will remain, subject to interpretation. Many interpretations exist. Therefore, we can see that Christians have never reasoned from Scripture alone, although many have claimed to do just that.
Logic is equally fuzzy. None of its premises are incontrovertibly true. The reasoning process often is invalid. Inductive logic, by its very nature, cannot produce conclusions that will always prove worthy of our trust.
Trying to settle matters by logic, it is essential that we must understand and accept the premises from which we are reasoning. We must also accept the validity of the reasoning process. Otherwise, we are unlikely to agree on conclusions.
Anytime we disagree with the conclusion of someone’s reasoning, there are only two ways they can be challenged: the truth of their premises and the validity of their reasoning process. This is true at least for deductive reasoning. Since inductive reasoning always goes somewhere beyond the evidence offered in the premises, we may reasonably disagree on the conclusions. The only way to clarify the matter is to reduce it to some deductive pattern. Then it can be subjected to rigorous testing.
The meaning of words lies more in how they are used than in what dictionaries, lexica, or etymologies have to say. Nonetheless, unless we clearly stipulate how we are using language, we cannot stray far from established meaning without jeopardizing our ability to communicate.
_________
Personally:
• Within the Holy Scriptures, my heart, mind, emotions, and soul turn to the following passages as interpretative signposts and as illuminators of the rest of these writings:
--I John 4:16
--Matthew 7:24-27
--John 14:6
--Colossians 1:15-20
--John 1:1-18
--Ephesians 1:10
--2 Corinthians 5:17-21
╶ Revelation 5
• When I turn to logic, my major methods of testing by deduction are:
--The categorical syllogism
--The conditional syllogism
--The dilemma
╶ The reductio ad absurdum
Inductively, I turn to the ways of testing:
--Analogies
--The hypothetico-deductive method
--Simple induction
• I approach the biblical writings using a logic appropriate to stories rather than to strict propositional logic. As story, the Bible speaks with multilayered, multifaceted, and somewhat open-ended meaning.
• Therefore I concur with Jan Zwicky’s judgment that none of it--whether understood as story or parts of the story, or understood in propositional language–can be reduced to unidimensional meaning without misre-presentation of its intention.
• I also concur with Ludwig Wittgenstein when he says, “That which is ragged should be left ragged.” In spite of the ultimate clarity that is visible when we look at the big picture of the biblical theme and when we have acknowledged its unity and harmony, the Bible remains a rather ragged collection of writings.
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A couple of ideas that came up in the conversation that stimulated this little essay might clarify some small piece of what I’ve been saying.
1. The word, introvert, was used a few times. It was not clear to me how it was being used; its usage did not fit with my own. The real heart of our concerns was sabotaged by this vagueness. “Contrary to what most people think, an introvert is not simply a person who is shy. In fact, being shy has little to do with being an introvert! Shyness has an element of apprehension, nervousness and anxiety, and while an introvert may also be shy, introversion itself is not shyness. Basically, an introvert is a person who is energized by being alone and whose energy is drained by being around other people.”
In context, “introvert” was used to designate a group that was perceived to represent a representative majority of the population of the United States, if not actually most of the entire human population. The majority were identified as introverts. Among authorities, the well-established fact is that introverts constitute only about 25% of the population.
This ratio seems validated in my own life experience as, for at least sixty-five years, I’ve observed human social interaction. Day in and day out, wherever you go, the great majority of our world, as well as almost any select group, is made up of extroverted people. And, as an introvert myself, I suspect that God intended us to be so, so that we can live in societies rather than in reclusion, seclusion, and isolation.
On the other hand:
Most people believe that an extrovert is a person who is friendly and outgoing. While that may be true, that is not the true meaning of extroversion. Basically, an extrovert is a person who is energized by being around other people. This is the opposite of an introvert who is energized by being alone.
[About.com is a helpful starting point for understanding these two types of human personality.]
2. It was said that Jesus called us–whoever that might be--to be “fishers of men.”
When Jesus actually called a few fishermen to become his special trainees, he did say he would make them “fishers of men.” When, however, he called a collector of governmental revenues, he neither told him that he was to become a “fisher of men,” nor that he was to be a “revenuer for God.” When he called a fellow who was part of a quasi-military group, he said nothing to him about either “fishing” or fighting.
What we can appropriately extrapolate from ancient texts, sacred or otherwise, is another discussion altogether.
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This has been an essay into something of how, in practice, I put my concept of considerate/dialectical thinking to use. It is written to whomever it concerns, and for whatever it is worth.
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Now, in private, I will, along these lines, go about analyzing the aforementioned challenging discussion.
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