A whole new ballgame in cheating. Introducing ChatGPT

[Wahoo Redux]

Postmodernism has probably lowered peoples' standards for what counts as an"argument" that all kinds of drivel will pass.

I don't believe there is such a thing as "Postmodernism"-----Pomo is the simple evolution of the modernist revolution of the early 1900s.

But what are you talking about, Marshy?

[marshwiggle]

Postmodernism has probably lowered peoples' standards for what counts as an"argument" that all kinds of drivel will pass.

I don't believe there is such a thing as "Postmodernism"-----Pomo is the simple evolution of the modernist revolution of the early 1900s.

But what are you talking about, Marshy?

The Sokol Affair

Grievance studies affair

These are a couple of examples of how right-sounding drivel got accepted for publication.

[Wahoo Redux]

Postmodernism has probably lowered peoples' standards for what counts as an"argument" that all kinds of drivel will pass.

I don't believe there is such a thing as "Postmodernism"-----Pomo is the simple evolution of the modernist revolution of the early 1900s.

But what are you talking about, Marshy?

The Sokol Affair

Grievance studies affair

These are a couple of examples of how right-sounding drivel got accepted for publication.

Okay.  That's Postmodernism?

[marshwiggle]

Postmodernism has probably lowered peoples' standards for what counts as an"argument" that all kinds of drivel will pass.

I don't believe there is such a thing as "Postmodernism"-----Pomo is the simple evolution of the modernist revolution of the early 1900s.

But what are you talking about, Marshy?

The Sokol Affair

Grievance studies affair

These are a couple of examples of how right-sounding drivel got accepted for publication.

Okay.  That's Postmodernism?

Pretty much. From Brittanica:

postmodernism, also spelled post-modernism, in Western philosophy, a late 20th-century movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of reason; and an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and economic power.

[Parasaurolophus]

I don' t think this has been posted yet:

Atlantic: The College Essay Is Dead: Nobody is prepared for how AI will transform academia.

The AI essay referenced in the article

Wait, that's "graduate level?" Also, man is that a terrible prompt. And this, "Ultimately, we need to understand the interactions among learning styles and environmental and personal factors, and how these shape how we learn and the kinds of learning we experience" is not an argument. How do we need to understand them? What do we need to understand? It's so vague that there's no real counterargument possible. What would you say "we don't need to understand those things?"

Postmodernism has probably lowered peoples' standards for what counts as an"argument" that all kinds of drivel will pass.

Outside the philosophy department, nobody knows what an argument actually is. Nor do they know what validity is. It's not postmodernism's doing.

[Liquidambar]

Outside the philosophy department, nobody knows what an argument actually is. Nor do they know what validity is. It's not postmodernism's doing.

Ouch!  Would you concede that some people in the math department might know what an argument is?

[marshwiggle]

Outside the philosophy department, nobody knows what an argument actually is. Nor do they know what validity is. It's not postmodernism's doing.

Ouch!  Would you concede that some people in the math department might know what an argument is?

Is a proof an argument? (I'm sure that's a philosophical question.)

[jerseyjay]

Outside the philosophy department, nobody knows what an argument actually is. Nor do they know what validity is. It's not postmodernism's doing.

Ouch!  Would you concede that some people in the math department might know what an argument is?

Is a proof an argument? (I'm sure that's a philosophical question.)

Arguably, outside a few psychometricians and statisticians, nobody knows what validity is. 

[Parasaurolophus]

Outside the philosophy department, nobody knows what an argument actually is. Nor do they know what validity is. It's not postmodernism's doing.

Ouch!  Would you concede that some people in the math department might know what an argument is?

Yes--I over-generalized: most people don't know what they are. Though everyone, of course, is familiar with colloquial usage. And even people who know occasionally screw it up.

[Wahoo Redux]

Outside the philosophy department, nobody knows what an argument actually is. Nor do they know what validity is. It's not postmodernism's doing.

Ouch!  Would you concede that some people in the math department might know what an argument is?

Yeah, that's a little arrogant, Para.

Remember that Pomo has its nonsensical tentacles in all sorts of things. 

[Parasaurolophus]

Outside the philosophy department, nobody knows what an argument actually is. Nor do they know what validity is. It's not postmodernism's doing.

Ouch!  Would you concede that some people in the math department might know what an argument is?

Is a proof an argument? (I'm sure that's a philosophical question.)

Yup, proofs are arguments.

Outside the philosophy department, nobody knows what an argument actually is. Nor do they know what validity is. It's not postmodernism's doing.

Ouch!  Would you concede that some people in the math department might know what an argument is?

Is a proof an argument? (I'm sure that's a philosophical question.)

Arguably, outside a few psychometricians and statisticians, nobody knows what validity is.

Statistical validity is a different beast with the same name, which is confusing.

[Parasaurolophus]

Outside the philosophy department, nobody knows what an argument actually is. Nor do they know what validity is. It's not postmodernism's doing.

Ouch!  Would you concede that some people in the math department might know what an argument is?

Yeah, that's a little arrogant, Para.

Remember that Pomo has its nonsensical tentacles in all sorts of things.

I mean, it's a technical term with a precise meaning. How many people could accurately state the definition of an argument without looking it up, and consistently pick out its elements? How many people, unaided, can correctly identify that a conditional is not an argument, let alone explain why?

I don't think it's far-fetched to say that the answer is 'very few', including in the university. Hell, most of the comp textbooks I've seen conflate arguments and statements, or validity, soundness, and truth.

But that's not post-modernism's doing. The situation predated it. And it's also not a big deal, because ordinary discourse doesn't need that kind of precision. We can complain about public standards of argument if we want to. They're certainly abysmally low. But those of us casting stones should be careful, lest we throw them at ourselves, too.

But I accept the charge of arrogance.

[Wahoo Redux]

Fair enough.  Comp textbooks are generally terrible----I only used comp textbooks when required by the department I was looking for, and then as little as I could.  And we are dealing with a very basic level in those classes anyway. 

[jerseyjay]

Statistical validity is a different beast with the same name, which is confusing.

Well, yes, but isn't that the point? Each field has its own "technical terms with precise meanings" that do not really align with the way other fields use the words. To say that only my field understands something is somewhat strange. (Unless the argument--as it were--is, only my field understands my field, which is pretty much a tautology.)

That being said, I do agree that to blame all of this on postmodernism is wrong. On the other hand, I am not that anybody outside of a few specialized literary theorists can define postmodernism.

And I am not going to start on what "modern", "modernism", or "modernity" mean.

[Parasaurolophus]

Well, yes, but isn't that the point? Each field has its own "technical terms with precise meanings" that do not really align with the way other fields use the words. To say that only my field understands something is somewhat strange. (Unless the argument--as it were--is, only my field understands my field, which is pretty much a tautology.)

I think that's right when different fields have different definitions of some term. So, for example, a 'disjunction' in logic is a truth-functional connective that translates the ordinary language term 'or' (we then go on to give the truth-conditions for inclusive and exclusive disjunctions). In linguistics, however, it's an adverbial adjunct that expresses unnecessary content.

But that's not what's going on with 'argument'. It's not that English/literature, history, sociology, philosophy, etc. all have different definitions of what an argument is. It's that most disciplines operate with an intuitive sense of what the word means, rather than adhering to its definition. And, unfortunately, those intuitions are driven by use (and misuse), which don't track its actual meaning. Its actual meaning is preserved in philosophy because we have an entire subfield (logic) which is the formal study of argumentation, and because everyone who gets a philosophy degree of any stripe has to pass some sort of logic class. And, indeed, because the whole point of the discipline is the construction and evaluation of arguments.

What is an argument? Quite simply, it's a set of statements, at least one of which (a premise) is offered in support of at least one other (the conclusion). A statement is any truth-evaluable sentence (any sentence that can be either true or false; in other words, a declarative sentence). As far as I (/we) can see, that just is what an argument is, for everyone. It's just that it's a commonly misused term, and the reason it's misused by others but not by us is just that we have significant disciplinary reasons to care about it, whereas others have stronger reasons to care about other stuff. It's not that we have special access to this special term. We certainly do have plenty such terms, but 'argument' is a different case.

The reason I'm exercised about it here is dialectical. The claim was that "Postmodernism has probably lowered peoples' standards for what counts as an'argument' that all kinds of drivel will pass." And my point was that if you want to talk about 'what counts as an argument', you're shifting to a level of discourse where the term's actual meaning is quite important. But then, if you look around, you'll find that very few people actually know the term's meaning and how to apply it correctly (seriously, I have hundreds of intro students to prove it!), and you have to concede that this situation has nothing to do with postmodernism. It's just that most of the time we use the term unreflectively. And most of the time that's perfectly fine, because nobody is applying strict standards to our discourse. And that's true across most of academia, because most disciplines are more concerned with other stuff.