Marg,
This long diatribe on ad hocs doesn’t respond to my post at all. It’s just a repetition of previous assertions—to which I responded already. Why do you keep redefining ad hocs. We all know what they are by now, some better than others. My hope is that you will recognize your tendency to invent them, and stop. You think if you keep tweaking your definition, the universe will finally align with Marg and, at last, you will get that big payoff.
There is “faulty reasoning” with after the fact changes of assumptions which is ad hoc fallacy and then there is after the fact reasoning/ ad hoc, which is reasonable and plausible and has nothing to do with faulty reasoning. My ad hocs which you accuse of being fallacious are reasonable and plausible and have nothing to do with the ad hoc fallacy.
Changes in background assumptions are defenses against adverse evidence, but they’re not ad hocs—but let’s focus on a legitimate ad hoc and the wrong kind, according to Schick and Vaughn said—“Such a move is legitimate if there’s an independent means of verifying their existence. … What makes a hypothesis ad hoc is that it can’t be verified independently of the phenomenon it’s supposed to explain” (p. 157). Note that “reasonable and plausible” isn’t the distinguishing feature. It’s unverifiability. Who would intentionally invent an ad hoc that was unreasonable and implausible? As I said before, historical novels are reasonable and plausible. You might think your trick-hat theory is plausible (I don’t), but it’s not verifiable and adds nothing to your central theory. The only reason it was called into existence was to protect your theory from falsifying evidence.
Ad hoc fallacy is specific. It occurs when an explanatory hypothesis runs counter to objective verifiable evidence and in order to maintain that explanatory hypothesis in the face of evidence to the contrary an ad hoc assumption is added to the original claim..effectively doing away with the objective verifiable counter evidence. So common examples entail adding the supernatural to the assumptions effectively disallowing the counter evidence. In science it might be eliminating previously accepted theories which runs counter to a new hypothesis. So it’s doesn’t have to be the supernatural which is invoked. On the internet encyclopedia site for philosophy they give an example.
An ad hoc can simply be a response to adverse evidence, whether or not it’s an assumption added to the main theory. The counter-evidence doesn’t have to be “objective verifiable”, especially in history. Counter-evidence can be an argument (e.g., a contradiction in the main theory), it could be testimony, it could be a document. It just has to be evidentiary in some form. To require counter-evidence to be “objectively verifiable” would be to shift the burden of proof. In other words, you have made a theory true until proven wrong by the highest caliber evidence—likely higher than the theory it’s attempting to confute.
Example:
Yolanda: If you take four of these tablets of vitamin C every day, you will never get a cold.
Juanita: I tried that last year for several months, and still got a cold.
Yolanda: Did you take the tablets every day?
Juanita: Yes.
Yolanda: Well, I’ll bet you bought some bad tablets.
The burden of proof is definitely on Yolanda’s shoulders to prove that Juanita’s vitamin C tablets were probably “bad” — that is, not really vitamin C. If Yolanda can’t do so, her attempt to rescue her hypothesis (that vitamin C prevents colds) is simply a dogmatic refusal to face up to the possibility of being wrong.
That’s you, Marg! The key here is the assumption that your theory is right, which justifies the ad hoc explanation. It’s like saying—“My theory is right, so there has to be an explanation. Let’s see if I can make something up that is consistent with my assumption.” That’s why I sometimes call them question-begging ad hoc hypotheses. Note that it’s plausible, but not probable. The same applies to your trick-hat theory (although it would be hard to fool people every day for 90 days). I thought Glenn handled this well. However, notice that the ad hoc that the pills must have been bad is plausible, and that the counter-evidence is rests on the word of Juanita and is not “objectively verifiable”.
So notice in the above example..the claimant is making an explanatory hypothesis which is open to falsification. A counter argument is made with evidence which falsified the original claim...which shifts the burden of proof back to the original claimant, but their response does away with that evidence by rejecting it as being “bad”. So the burden of proof hasn’t been met by the original claimant in overturning the counter evidence.
Theoretically through inductive testing Juanita's claims can be objectively verified.
In effect, the discussion can’t proceed because how can Juanitia prove the pills she took weren’t bad. [/quote]
I know how she feels. This is the situation with your ad hocs as well. How can we prove Joseph Smith didn’t use a trick-hat? How can we prove the Spalding witnesses didn’t have the weird interpretation of “lost tribes” that you invented? How can we prove most of the Mormon witnesses weren’t part of a conspiracy? Obviously, any attempt to do so will be met with another ad hoc, which makes your main theory unfalsifiable.
As well, the ad hoc fallacy accusation doesn’t work when a claim is a subjective opinion.. not open to objective falsification.
If I say I believe I’ve won this argument and you say no you haven’t. Your response isn’t an ad hoc fallacy. We are expressing opinions.
So is that what you want us to do. Regard your ad hocs as an expression of “opinion”? I wish I could do that, but it’s not that easy. The problem with that is that you formulated them as arguments, and presented them as a means to dismiss counter-evidence threatening your main theory. They are not opinions. And, obviously, opinion can be contradicted by evidence. It’s actually the other way round—evidence can’t be overturned by opinion—which is what you have been trying to do with your ad hocs.
So with the lost tribes business…you are asserting your opinion that when anyone in Spalding’s day referred to “lost tribes” that must have entailed both the historical understanding of it as well as the mythical speculations popularized. But that is your asserted opinion.
You have this backwards, Marg. The “lost tribes” was introduced by Ben and Glenn as counter-evidence to your assertion that the witnesses’ memories were reliable. Their claim that Spalding’s MS linked the Indians with the “lost tribes”, and by implication the Book of Mormon also, is problematic since the Book of Mormon doesn’t do that. Your responses were purely ad hoc, particularly that the phrase “lost tribes” doesn’t mean what it says, but that it has some specialized definition that you invented and that Lehi’s family somehow represented the lost tribes. Like Jaunita’s pills, this line of reasoning is unverifiable and unfalsifiable. The burden was on you to establish your unique interpretation, and you didn’t do it. Historians and literary critics work on this kind of thing all the time, and the established methodology in this situation is the compare “lost tribes” with the usage in the 19th century. In this instance, we would especially want to compare it’s usage with those who used the term in conjunction with Indian origins. Pretty straightforward. But you want to want to enter into convoluted definitional speculation based on the assumption that your theory is right, so it had to have happened this way. Again, these were ad hoc arguments to save your theory—not just opinions.
Spalding was a biblical skeptic, he was also not writing a story of a historical account of what happened to the “lost tribes” he was writing a (pretended) historical account which he hoped would be perceived as true, of how the Am. Indians got to America and where their ancestry came from. The witnesses as well were recalling Spalding’s story and interpretation as they understood from discussions with him.
When you say he was a biblical skeptic, I think it was perfectly suited for him to write about Romans coming to America, but I can’t understand why he would write about the ten tribes. Here you say he wanted it to be perceived as true, but we had a long discussion about your theory that it was really making fun of the Bible. Regardless, Spalding’s writing fiction doesn’t give you permission to invent things.
So I’m not countering an established fact..I’m countering an opinion you have asserted. My explanation is also reasonable and plausible, it’s not completely unwarranted. With so many witnesses recounting Spalding’s story explaining Am. Indians descendants of “lost tribes”..the likelihood of confusion is not probable, they don’t have reason to lie..so it is reasonable that Spalding’s focus was to give an account of where the Am. Indians came from which used the historically unaccounted for lost tribes which is accepted historical fact... to trace to in his historical account.
Now you are setting up an impossible standard with “established fact”. Whatever isn’t established fact is asserted opinion. That’s not what’s happening, Marg. You were inventing ad hoc responses to counter evidence—your assertion that the Spalding witnesses’ memories can be relied on. That they were wrong about the Book of Mormon being about the “lost tribes” is a problem. This is legitimate argument and evidence—not opinion. Your responses, however, were illegitimate ad hocs.
So to sum up...opinions generally are not meant to be verifiable. If I’m responding to an opinion with an opinion and mine is plausible, just as plausible as yours..that’s not fallacious reasoning, in otherwords it's not ad hoc fallacy. Your original claim regarding “lost tribes” is an unverifiable, unfalsifiable explanation which is your subjective opinion. It is your assertion that the witnesses in referring to spalding’s “lost tribes” necessarily understood the myth to be included with that concept. But Spalding was writing a historical account one he thought would be believed.
Again, you weren’t offering opinion, but argument, and argument is subject to refutation. However, your responses were ad hocs, which are unfalsifiable. So that’s why we are having this discussion. Now, you argued that the Spalding witnesses had good memories and can be relied on, and we countered with evidence that challenged that assertion. Did you say: “Hey, wait a minute, I’m just offering my opinion!” No. You proceeded to invent three or four ad hocs to save your theory, and you argued endlessly that you were given sound argumentation and reasoning.
His account was about Am. Indians not “lost tribes” or what happened to all the lost tribes exiled. He would only need the "lost tribes" as a point in time to trace back to ..to enable him to account for Am Indians in a historically valid context. He didn’t have to incorporate the “lost tribes” myth as you assert, in fact why should he if he’s attempting to write a historical account to be taken literally…and he was a biblical skeptic. He didn’t take everything in the Bible literally, so why assume he would necessarily want to or have to use the myth as part of his story.
This is ad hoc speculating. You could speculate anything, but you chose to speculate in such a way as to conform to your theory. It doesn’t matter what you think Spalding did or did not do. The only thing we have is the witnesses’ statements, and they said Spalding’s MS linked the Indians with the “lost tribes” and by inference the Book of Mormon also. We can show the probable meaning of the term, whereas you can only give ad hoc speculation.
You mention “just so stories are referred to as fallacious ad hoc. This is also taken from wiki on what a just so story is “he Just So Stories for Little Children were written by British author Rudyard Kipling. They are highly fanticised origin stories and are among his best known, and arguably best, works. The stories, first published in 1902, are fantastic accounts of how various natural phenomena came about.”
So if the accounts by Kipling explained natural phenomena but it’s obvious they are not backed up with good reasoning and evidence ..then sure they are fallacious ad hoc reasoning. Essentially they are explanations without objective evidence to support. That’s not a good example of an ad hoc fallacy though. Kipling didn’t intend his explanations to be taken as literally true, serious explanations of natural phenomena. To describe then as ad hoc fallacy is beside the point, he wasn’t presenting an argument, or explanatory hypothesis (nor intending to) meant to be true.
Marg, at the beginning of the article you quote above is this—“For the anthropological sense, see Just-so story.”
So, now reread what I quoted and see yourself, particularly the scenario you imagine for Spalding writing about the lost tribes:
A just-so story, also called the ad hoc fallacy, is a term used in academic anthropology, biological sciences, social sciences, and philosophy. It describes an unverifiable and unfalsifiable narrative explanation for a cultural practice, a biological trait, or behavior of humans or other animals. The use of the term is an implicit criticism that reminds the hearer of the essentially fictional and unprovable nature of such an explanation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story