Do The People Know What's Good For Them?

One of my good friends on Blogger, Anadroid, made a great comment on my post about punishment, called Should The Cane Be Brought Back in School?. She said, "yeah I wonder who wants the cane back? Surely not someone who was caned as a child at school? Or maybe that is who wants it back cos' they think it helped them somehow or they are a sadist or they want revenge or something....It's a strange old world."

Strange indeed, as a glance at the comments under the original post at timesonline will show. All the floggers came out to play! This morning me and my friends debated the question, and we decided the following: Those people probably don't care about school discipline, but they're frustrated with what they see as social breakdown. As long as they know that someone, anyone, is getting their ass whipped for it, they're happy.

It's the classic knee-jerk reaction of unthinking people, when they see an example of chaos, or deliberate flouting of authority. They want to exert more and more control until the undesirable elements finally step into line. These kind of people, if they did but know it, are probably only one step (or goose step?) away from Nazism. All they need is a Hitler to lead them.

But it does not end there...

A teacher pointed out that, according to a survey, the majority of the population of England believe that capital punishment for homicide should be re-instated. Not for all types of homicide, only the worst ones such as terrorism, or killing a policeman or a child. Now you may ask, if England is a democracy, why doesn't the Parliament bring back hanging?

Because the representatives believe that the people have got it wrong. Do you think they are acting rightly to set aside the will of the people who elected them? If so, what does that tell us about democracy as a form of government?

The Members of Parliament see themselves as better qualified to judge what is the right action on such an important issue. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato took this idea one step further. He rejected democracy altogether, and proposed (in the Republic) a state ruled by philosophers as a model for the perfect society. Everyone would have their place in the social order, and the elite ruling class would be given a rigorous training regime from an early age, to prepare them for philosophic government. In particular, they would be trained to discern the nature of the Good, so that the people would not need to decide what was good for them. Any form of dissent would be ruthlessly put down. But Plato believed that this system would bring about stability of government and general happiness. A similar proposal can be seen in the writings of Confucius in China.

But are these models of government, sophisticated as they are in their description, really any different from the knee-jerk flog 'em reactions of the ordinary joe in the street?

The education system of training for excellence advocated by Plato, was later adopted in Renaissance Italy, and also in Britain in the elite "public schools", where it served as a model for the American school system, which in turn has influenced the schools of many other countries around the world.

Anyone got any opinions?

Syllogisms Can Help The World

The cause of many of the most major problems in our lives is when people commit a logical fallacy.

Let me tell you what I mean.

The study of logical inferences, or the drawing of conclusions from a starting statement, known as an premise, using logic, hinges on the idea of a syllogism.

Here is a classic syllogism.

A. All men are mortal
B. Socrates is a man
I. Therefore Socrates is mortal.

The two statements, or premises, A and B are combined together to make the logical inference I. This is the basis of philosophical logic; it is the building block upon which the entire edifice of philosophy is founded. But as we shall see - also of everyday life. A poor understanding of the workings of the syllogism can lead us to make disastrous decisions, affecting not only ourselves, but others too.

Another syllogism:

A. All cats look grey in the dark
B. Felix is a cat
I. Therefore Felix looks grey in the dark

The first syllogism cannot be disputed, because the logic is faultless, AND the premises are true. In the second one, we could dispute it, not because there is anything wrong logically, but because we might disagree with one of the original premises (all cats look grey in the dark.)

What about this one?

A. All grass is green
B. My eyes are green
I. Therefore my eyes are grass

Can you see what is wrong with this one and how it is different from the correct one at the top of this post? If you can, then your logic is better than that of the Education Ministry of a small, populous and influential country on the north-west fringe of Europe. Their argument went like this: A survey of schools where students get consistently high grades shows that all of them set homework. So if the schools in the inner-city sink areas and in the ghettoes start to set homework and enforce it, then they too will have high grades. Yes, these people really did believe that! Their error can be seen in a simple syllogism.

A. All successful schools set homework to their students
B. Drug Street High School has started setting homework
I. Therefore Drug Street High School will start to be successful

This a bit like saying my eyes are grass. There's an episode in Alice in Wonderland where they had mistakenly planted white roses which were supposed to be red, so they painted them red. But sadly, this is the way governments work.

Another kind of logical fallacy, and one which is very dangerous in our society, leads people to fear those who are different in some way. For example, in their skin colour. An illustration of this fallacy is:

A. All the black men I have heard about are criminals
B. John is a black man
I. Therefore John is a criminal

When we write it in this way, the mistake becomes more obvious.

Perhaps if people took more notice of syllogisms in their thinking, the world would be a happier place.

Just to finish, here is a paradox syllogism:

A. All the men of the island of Crete are liars
B. I am a Cretan man
I. Therefore I am lying

If he is lying, how do we know that either of statements A or B are true? And if they are not true, how do we know that it's true that he's lying? And if it is true that he's lying, he must be telling the truth, so he's not lying, so it's....

AAAAh, no, I can't get my head round this!