Evaluate the credibility of arguments

Teri... in order to be really goood at this type of evaluation, you must have a serious knowledge of both sides of the discussion...Procede with caution as to not show a personal bias.

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I got an email request from Yedda to answer this question, but in the email no mention was made of just what arguments were being evaluated, so I thought about this in a more abstract context which might help you (or anyone) with evaluating not just arguments, but the validity of "facts" as they are presented.  However, I don't really expect that anyone will apply the mental self-discipline to meticulously or rigidly follow these criteria for such an evaluation.

Essentially you have to look at any item that is presented as "fact" in the context in which it is found.  That includes looking at the source, or apparent source of the information if that can be determined.  If the source of the information can be determined, then that source needs to be evaluated itself, than so on back to some level of near exhaustion before one can really understand the influences that may have led to the opinion that is being presented as fact.  There are no "objective facts" in the absolute sense of the immutably true that is valid for everyone in every situation and from the beginning of time and lasting forever.

(I know, this is very abstract and I won't be offended if you don't want to follow this thread of discussion any further, but it happens to interest me.)

A lot of this analysis came about as a result of my taking on the "I think, therefore I am" (originally in Latin, "Cogito, ergo sum." though even in this case, the "quote" is a corruption since the original has no punctuation to the best of my recollection). Indeed as simple as that may be in terms of fundamental logic, to accept the validity of the conclusion one has to assume several "facts" not obviously in evidence.  Those facts are, in no particular order, a) one assumes that a conclusion arrived at by a system of logic can be considered to be valid and needs no further examination because it followed the rules of logic, and therefore the underlying assumption also exists that the rules of logical argument hold true; "and that's just for starters" as they say; b) one must assume the meanings of the words to be the same to the writer/thinker as they are generally held to mean among men (which is to say in general conversation and thought, and more particularly in a known language, in which they form a coherent and complete thought);  [as a sidelight, one of my favorite "jokes" is an incomplete thought often expressed by Robin Williams, though I know he was not the first to think of, or use it: "Reality:  what a concept!"] [back to Rene Descartes, who also said, "It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well."]  c) within the validity of the language one has to also assume that the very concept of "first person" [which is to say words like "I" or "me", or in this case verb tenses implying the first person, as "cogito" does] is not a mere illusion or self-delusion that one can actually be separate from all other things in a state of singularity, or that such an assumption of detachedness is itself valid. This one is a little difficult to follow the "delusion of individualism" if you haven't given the concept some thought before, but think of it in terms of the Star Trek The Next Generation character, "Seven-of-nine", who although she had been part of the collective mind of the race known as the Borg, whose thoughts were all tied together by a mechanical technology, but who was only able to exist separately because she was a "foundling" human that had been adopted by the Borg when she was an orphan.  There was an underlying assumption in the Star Trek mythology (if I understood it correctly, and I was only ever mildly a "Trekkie") that a true Borg could not have lived without the mental connection to the hive mind because it would be incapable of even eating and breathing much less feeding and clothing itself and surviving alone.

Now, having gone this far with me, let's try to get back to the original premise of how do you evaluate the credibility of an argument, which comes down to what "weight" do you place on the so-called "facts" in the arguments.  In essence one must assess the person (if known) or publication along with the type and reputation of the publication in which the "fact" is presented.  One needs to consider the bias or biases shown in the past in similar (but even in not obviously) related instances.  If the "author" of the statement or the "reporter" of the statement is know, one can evaluate other material they have placed on public display in the past.  One should usually also avoid chiseling your conclusion about an evaluation in stone, but rather also watch for future consistency in presenting these as well as other facts, since the credibility of a source may change over time, or as more details are know about those factors affecting that author or reporter's worldview.  That is to say, that whether a publication with unknown authorship, or the writings/speech of a particular person, to evaluate the "weight" of their arguments (and the likely validity or accuracy of their "facts") one needs to consider not just past statements, but also the time and place of those statements, and the total historical context from which the observations are being made.  To put it another way, when evaluating the statements about the appearance of Russian village after several days of artillery bombardment in the middle of bitterly cold winter, it is important to know whether the description offered is from a French soldier in Napoleon's army, a German officer during World War II, a Russian baker born in the village and the son of the architect who built the local church, or an Egyptian diplomat dying of pneumonia and hoping to reach Cairo and plentiful supplies of medicine before he succumbs to his disease.  Each of those "characters" would be informed by a cultural and historical perspective that might allow the French peasant soldier to see the scene, and report his version of the battle more in the way of the Russian baker than of the German officer, even though he and the German share the experience of warriors failing to conquer the vast territory.  But it might actually be equally as probable that the French soldier, starved and nearly frozen, might have a opinion and description closer to the Egyptian diplomat, both facing death, far from home, victims of cruel circumstance and climate alike.

The German officer might have a more meticulously detailed rendition of the events, or even of the positions of the bricks and state of the plaster, the hay and the horses than any of the others, but the Egyptian might see the greatest tragedy in the lost history of this place because the people who knew the details are already lying on frozen ground waiting for it to thaw enough to be buried along with their memories.  In contrast the French soldier may have little concept of either history or geography beyond his own little village and the stream that ran through it before he was marched away as a conscript to fight Napoleon's wars.  He, having taken to heart the military training propaganda that his country's enemies are barbarians, less than human, he might see nothing of value in the place and mainly feel bitter that the local citizens did not die more quickly so that he might return to his beloved valley, there to tend his garden instead of freezing to death himself in this unknown place for reasons he will never understand.  Each one's "story" might be equally "true" for them.  Each version could be told with the utmost sincerity and intention to tell only the "facts" but their education, background, family and country history whether they know it or not, affects how they "see" their "facts", or tell their "truth".  The French soldier is a good Catholic and believes the Church's view that there is, in effect, no such thing as "science", there is only God's truth and Satan's deceptions.  The German officer may be an engineer, with essentially the opposite views.  The Russian a reluctant atheist under Communism, still imbued with his family's reverence for the architecture of the church his family built.  The Egyptian could be a son of a Jew and a Muslim who attends a Westernized Christian church for the purposes of his wife

s family's international import and export business with little interest in the squabblings between, "the peoples of the book", but somewhat comforted that his mixed heritage has hedged his bets in all quarters as he faces the grim reality that he might die before he is able to reach his home on the Nile.

So, now for the sake of this little exercise, in spite of the fact that some of them live in different centuries, imagine that each of them sees a man stagger out of the village through a field deep with snow, carrying something large on his back.   He suddenly straightens up.  Whatever is on his back falls to the ground behind him.  He falls, face down in the snow, dead.   How would each of these people we created describe what they saw?  How could we ever know what were "facts" and what were opinions and assumptions?

And all of that is under the assumption that no one has any ulterior motives, or reasons to twist the truth as they know it.  Would the story be the same if the German officer told the story to his Colonel as it would be if he told it to his son years later, or to his captors in a Russian prison? 

We can only HOPE to get a valid evaluation of any set of "facts" or "arguments" by being informed by a thorough knowledge of all of science, all of history, and an infinitely (and therefore unknowable) detailed assessment of thousand of thousands of factors.

Usually the best way we have to allow ALL of these factors into our evaluation of any "argument" is to shift all of that knowledge into the background and while not ignoring any of those things we think we "know", trust to our instincts, our "gut feeling" because amazing though it seems, we are ACTUALLY a "collective" or "hive" mind made up of billions of tiny cells, and when our perceptions tell us that something is wrong it will literally increase the acidity in your stomach as well as other hormones and chemicals in your body so that "gut feeling" if you learn to sensitize yourself to it, usually really is a kind of brain-on-autopilot best guess.  Sometimes it is better than all the logic you can bring to bare on a  problem or question.

Sincerely,

Stafford "Doc" Williamson

 http://daochienergy.com