Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 June 26

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June 26

Longest series of prenominals

Australia's current Governor-General has 6 prenominal words in his formal style: His Excellency General The Honourable Sir Peter Cosgrove AK, MC.

Is this approaching some sort of record? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 09:39, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

I think The Right Reverend and Right Honourable The Lord Carey of Clifton goes 2 better, and almost certainly isn't the record-holder. AlexTiefling (talk) 10:16, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

(I presume we're excluding technically-available but obsolete styles such as 'The Most High, Noble and Potent Prince'?) AlexTiefling (talk) 10:45, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Debrett's Peerage gives Jonathan Sacks six words "The Very Rev the Chief Rabbi" ([1]) but that ignores the fact that he is both a Baron and a Professor, or five words "The Chief Rabbi the Lord Sacks", which just ignores the latter. Far be it from me to argue with Debrett's, but... oh hang it, I'd argue with Debrett's. Let's say 7+ for him. --Dweller (talk) 12:36, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

You can't really use 'Rabbi' (='Teacher') with 'Professor'; I think that while he was in office, but after he got his peerage, he was 'Chief Rabbi the Very Reverend and Right Honourable the Lord Sacks of Aldgate, DD Kt &c', which is 10 words before the first personal name. AlexTiefling (talk) 15:21, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Why not? It seems to be ordinary English usage: "Rabbi Professor" (and probably corresponds to the once-common German title: "Doktor Rabbiner", also twice a "teacher"). הסרפד (call me Hasirpad) 04:05, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Although these seem to be dropped when elevated to the British peerage; "The Most Reverend and Right Honourable Dr George Carey" became "The Right Reverend and Right Honourable The Lord Carey of Clifton" and "Professor Robert Winston" became "Baron Winston of Hammersmith". Alansplodge (talk) 11:45, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

The full title that Idi Amin eventually invented for himself included 10 words before his name (and another 30 words or abbreviations after). --70.49.171.225 (talk) 05:53, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

The world came to regard him as a sad joke. I'd prefer we continue to do so. Self-appointed titles are like verbal promises: not worth the paper they're printed on. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 11:38, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Among his various initials, he left out the most popular. As in "Idi 'VD' Amin". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:16, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Promises made without words are unreliable for other reasons. —Tamfang (talk) 08:00, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

OK, so 10 prenoms (for Lord Sacks) seems to be the longest thus far. If anyone comes across a longer concatenation, they might kindly let me know. Thanks for all contributions. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:42, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

JackofOz: Are you looking for official prenominal suffixes only, or arbitrary (not self-granted) honorifics will also do? Rabbinic Hebrew letter-writing has a several centuries old tradition of prefixing several lines of poetic honorifics when addressing one's superiors. One example I saw recently (translated from the Hebrew):

"To the Rabbi, the Gaon, the pious one, master of all the children of the exile, the Tzaddik who is the foundation of the world, the strong hammer, the right pillar, etc. [i.e., "the light of Israel"—part three of the traditional hammer/pillar/light trio], his honor, his holiness, the peace of his Torah, our master the rabbi, Rabbi [insert name here] ..."

הסרפד (call me Hasirpad) 20:47, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

The official ones that apply in formal contexts today were in my purview. Ones that would be used when addressing a formal letter to such a person, for example. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:01, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

That long list for a rabbi looks like a similar thing to calling a British duke 'The Most High, Mighty and Potent Prince, His Grace the Duke of Denver'; it's not what you'd put on an envelope or letterhead, no matter how formal you're being. AlexTiefling (talk) 21:18, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Contacting Kate

I would like to contact someone who is close to the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton. (Redacted) I was in a great psychological distress and I often cried, and I had lost sleep. Elnes L., a french man of 50 years old, having a Catholic spiritual search, has developed a therapy to overcome any psychological disorder, depression and other, based on graphics as a professional. Indeed, just a felt pen and a sheet of tracing paper and simply re-draw curved shapes, soft and waving your hand to regain your sanity. The result is very fast and now I sleep and for the first course in peace, I do not cry anymore, ie for more than a year. And if, over the coming days, a problem occurs, any kind whatsoever in fact, well I just have to make this game several times ......... and calm returns to me very quickly ........ things back in order. If someone knows a relative of the Duchess of Cambridge, could you put us in touch so that I could more precisely explain to him/her this game and the impact it had on me. Administrative authorities are aware of the merits of this game for which they gave a highly positive opinion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.168.47.232 (talk) 16:42, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

This is a reference desk for an encyclopaedia. We do not hold contact details for individuals, and I very much doubt that we would hand them out if we did. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:49, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Strangely enough, there is currently a widely-publicised criminal proceeding against various people in the United Kingdom for allegedly attempting to obtain such details unlawfully. Not that I would regard the OP's request in that light. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 23:25, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

The official royal website is https://www.royal.gov.uk/. You could give them a try. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:01, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

For the sake of keeping this relevant, Art therapy is our article on the subject. Tevildo (talk) 17:52, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

If art therapy can overcome any psychological disorder, perhaps you'd feel better simply drawing away the celebrity worship syndrome (only if you think it affects you, of course). On the other hand, Michael Fagan had an incident named for him, simply because he wanted to see Kate's grandmother-in-law badly enough. Things aren't very calm in prison, though, so choose wisely.

"Moral anorexia" is a cool phrase, by the way. Thanks for sharing. InedibleHulk (talk) 14:38, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Looking for the name of a fallacy

Say someone's an atheist and they are trying to make an argument for why religion is bad,

Argument: "One of the reasons why religion is harmful to our civilization is that it causes violence and strife over petty and unsubstantiated claims"

Rebuttal: "People kill each other over money too, should that be banned?"

I'm pretty sure the rebuttal is a fallacy of false thesis, can anyone confirm this? ScienceApe (talk) 17:23, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

I could make the same argument as to why atheism is harmful. Confirmation bias seems more to the point. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:36, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

One could also comment that arguing for the proposition "religion is bad" while attempting to prove the proposition "God does not exist" _is_ ignoratio elenchi. And vice-versa, of course. Tevildo (talk) 17:57, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Religion could be bad and God could still exist. Religion could be good even if God doesn't exist. It's not religion or money that "does things", it's how people use or abuse those things. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:01, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

I see no evidence that anyone was attempting to argue that God does not exist here. -- BenRG (talk) 20:27, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

I guess Tevildo's comment, a few lines above, had me fooled. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:30, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

I assumed that the OP's statment that the argument was made by an atheist meant that the argument was made in support of atheism. This assumption constitutes the fallacy of "Unacceptable Enthymeme", to which I freely confess - I still would hold that the assumption wasn't unreasonable, of course. Tevildo (talk) 09:47, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

That response, ironically enough, is a red herring fallacy. ScienceApe (talk) 18:21, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Which response? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:39, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

I would characterize it as more of a straw man fallacy. In his 1985 book, Madsen Pirie describes this sort of argument as "Unobtainable Perfection". The actual argument isn't formally invalid - "X should be banned because it causes violence, Religion/Money causes violence, Religion/Money should be banned." The fallacy comes in when the antagonist interprets the premiss as "Anything that causes _any_ violence should be banned", rather than something more reasonable like "Anything that causes violence disproportionate to its benefits should be banned"; so it's an overstatement of the opponent's position, rather than a statement of a different position altogether. Tevildo (talk) 17:39, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

The most obvious problem with the rebuttal is that it talks about banning religion/money, while the original argument only said that religion is harmful. These are totally different things, but I've noticed that people routinely fail to notice the difference (such as all previous responders in this thread, apparently). This may be an example of ignoratio elenchi. The fact that the rebuttal talks about money instead of religion doesn't strike me as a problem since it's not trying to make a point about money but about a weakness of the original argument. It's like rebutting "all men are mortal; Socrates is mortal; therefore Socrates is a man" by saying "by that argument I'm a llama." -- BenRG (talk) 20:27, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Why so many questions about fallacies?

A curiously large number of questions that are being asked here are to name a particular kind of fallacy. Does anybody know why? Is this related to the curriculum at U.S. schools? — Kpalion^(talk) 09:16, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

The vast majority of US schools are on summer break. --NellieBly (talk) 06:48, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

But we seem to be getting these questions throughout the year. Let me also clarify that I have nothing against this kind of questions; I'm just wondering why there are so many of them. In 2013 and 2014 alone, we've had Fallacy, Opposite of hasty generalization, Drawing conclusions from the wrong experiment - fallacy, What type of fallacy is this?, Arguments from authority, If gays had rights, thieves would have rights too, and Logical fallacy question. — Kpalion^(talk) 14:54, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Anecdote warning: This is just hearsay. But: There's a certain subculture of self-styled rationalists who regard the practice of good logic in arguments as good practice; they behave as though one always wins an argument by correctly shutting down the opposition's arguments through showing their logical invalidity. Lists of named fallacies - ideally with clunky cod-Latin names - are a vital tool for the acolytes of this subculture, as it enables them to reduce the hard work of rigorous argument to an I-spy game, or spot-the-fallacy. Of course, there are flaws in this reasoning. (1) Just because you say someone has committed a given error, does not mean they have in fact done so. (2) Nothing about cataloguing fallacies enables you to advance a good positive argument of your own. (3) Many flawed arguments have idiosyncratic flaws that do not show up in lists of fallacies. (4) It may be more productive to try and understand why the other party argues as they do, rather than just ingloriously shoot them down in a hail of argumentum-ad-whateverums. AlexTiefling (talk) 15:17, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Plus, an argument can be both correct and flawed. For (purely an) example, "$a^{2}+b^{2}=c^{2}\!\,$, any true mason knows that, dummy" is correct in its premise but contains secondary flaws. Ian.thomson (talk) 15:32, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Outside of a few specific courses on logic or rhetoric, logical fallacies are not commonly taught in USA schools. Like Alex says, there's a certain culture to it, but it need not be all negative. Some people like to know how to "properly" talk about a murder of crows or a pod of seals, and so have fun with list of collective nouns. Others like to know that to beg the question is a form of circular reasoning, and does not mean "raise the question". Still others like to know "what's this bug" or "what's this plant" (we get many more of those than fallacy questions) -- does this also strike you as odd? Basically, many people like to systematize their world, thought where they spend their effort will vary widely. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:12, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, only logic errors that can be mathematically described are typically taught in US schools. For example, "if P then Q" does not imply that "if Q the P". A specific case would be "If it rains the ground will be wet, but this does not mean that wet ground proves that it just rained". However, many logic errors can't be described mathematically, like an argument from authority, so are never taught in US schools. I believe this to be something that should be included in the basic curricula (even though that last one will have lots of students questioning their teachers and parents). I also think English names should be used, as Latin names turn most students off of learning. Kids might actually appreciate being able to win arguments with parents, etc., using logic. StuRat (talk) 16:21, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

And the parent might well respond, "If you're so smart, go out and earn a living." Then the child learns that "arguing from authority" often trumps classical logic. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:25, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

My experience was the other way around, actually. We never got the mathematical ones, just the "ad (whatever)" list. Then again, my state was like 47th or 48th in education at one point. Ian.thomson (talk) 16:28, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, and in a democracy, being able to think logically and pick apart campaign ads is a critical skill, not only for the individual, but also for the nation. I'd also like to see classes in consumer protection, where they teach all the ways companies try to rip us off with misleading claims (like the false claim that an offer is "Risk free !" when you give them your credit card). StuRat (talk) 16:31, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Oh, StuRat, every child's 12th birthday comes with an available book on marketing come-ons; no application is turned away. μηδείς (talk) 18:39, 30 June 2014 (UTC)