tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-513219332286952805.post2545216677091364665..comments2023-04-10T05:41:08.804-04:00Comments on Soxlosophy: Logical Fallacy of the Week: Summer Re-RunSoxlosophyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05297442834435511006noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-513219332286952805.post-88322096668397729572008-08-04T12:02:00.000-04:002008-08-04T12:02:00.000-04:00eric- well, i can't say i like the idea of people ...eric- well, i can't say i like the idea of people who read my blog coming away from it thinking i've calld them slaves. boo me!<BR/><BR/>so upon rereading my post this morning, i'm a little uncomfortable with it, especially becasue i don't want to suggest that the 2004 comparison isn't perfectly appropriate. it is appropriate, as there are definately similarities. <BR/><BR/>The question is whether they'll continue to be similar, and even if so, for what reasons. There are a couple of tricky issue entangled here, which i didn't distinguish adequately in my post. firstly, whether, or the extent to which, that plot device/story form of '04 caused the team's turnaround in '04, rather than merely preceded it, and, then secondly, whether the same can be said here.<BR/><BR/>further complicating the issue is that sometimes arguments by analogy are acceptable, and i didn't make this clear in the post. the fallacy is thinking it's logically necessary that just becasue A and B have some features in common, that they'll have further features in common. they don't have to- not logically. but of course they might very well have further features in common. it's just not a logical guarantee.<BR/><BR/>so the question is then: is 2008 being like 2004 one of those times? and maybe it is. after all, the trade of the cranky slugger might very well have tangible effects on the guys who play the game, and, human pscyhology being what it is, in fact similar things might result from such a scenario no matter when it happens (perhaps 1904 can be included.)<BR/><BR/>i think i wandered away in my post from my original thread, so to speak- just the contrast between the sportswriters'/fans' way of looking at things, and the players', depending on whether we're the audience/reader or the character in the story. <BR/><BR/>and the larger philosophical issue here is about how causality works at all; the philosopher david hume, for instance, thought that causality didn't exist at all in nature, and that there was just one damn thing after another, and the perception of causality is something that humans project onto the world because of a pscyhological habit, but this corresponds to nothing. (he did say we're all slaves to our passions, and certainly would say we're slaves to our perceptions of reality.) other philosophers do believe in causality, but then there's a question of what things cause what, and the forms they take, and in this case, whether there's a narrative form, explicable in human story psychological terms, or a bunch of molecules or statistics interacting according to laws of physics that don't make for a fun story.Soxlosophyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05297442834435511006noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-513219332286952805.post-66924462582009372872008-08-04T11:10:00.000-04:002008-08-04T11:10:00.000-04:00We break it down pitch by pitch, of course, but in...We break it down pitch by pitch, of course, but in our perception of time, every subdividable moment of time differs in infinite ways from the moments that bookend it. We can't find real patterns, because there are none.<BR/><BR/>Didn't stop me from making the 2004 comparison too, though. I'm just a slave to the human perception of reality, I guess ;)Erichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02904419302875420207noreply@blogger.com