Prev: rupie's dark scary secret (sodomized as a child)
Next: Derek, what's a vegan?
From: Rupert on 1 Sep 2008 01:01
In a recent post in which Ball made the remark that I grossly
overestimate my intellectual ability, he rather ironically made an
error of logic of the kind one would expect from a cognitively
impaired six-year-old child. Most likely he was fully aware that he
was committing such an error and gets joy out of making a clown out of
himself in public.

I wrote "I have not admitted to being psychotic", and he replied "You
have. You've admitted to psychotic episodes. Psychotics experience
psychotic episodes."

One commits the fallacy of Denying the Antecedent when one accepts a
syllogism of the following form:

(1) For all x, if P(x), then Q(x).
(2) Not P(a).
(3) Therefore, not Q(a).

Such a syllogism is patently invalid; it is easy to construct counter-
models.

Ball has frequently maintained (falsely) that all ethical vegans begin
their ethical commitment to veganism by accepting a fallacious
syllogism of this form.

In the above exchange, Ball is accepting the following syllogism.

(1) Any individual who has never experienced a psychotic episode is
not psychotic.
(2) It is not the case that Rupert has never experienced a psychotic
episode.
(3) Therefore, it is not the case that Rupert is not psychotic.

This is a syllogism of the above form and is thus invalid. It is not
the case that everyone who has experienced a psychotic episode at some
time in their lives is currently psychotic, as I have been trying to
drill into Ball's impenetrably thick skull for some years now. You do
not call a person who has experienced two psychotic episodes six years
ago and who has a vulnerability to psychosis a "psychotic". You can
call them a "schizophrenic" if you want to, if they have received a
diagnosis of schizophrenia. I have not received such a diagnosis but
it is possible that I may have paranoid schizophrenia; Ball is welcome
to call me a "paranoid schizophrenic" if he wants to.

I am not psychotic; it really is quite a marvel that someone with
sufficient cognitive ability to actually turn on a PC would not have
grasped this point after all these years.

Will you ever get tired of being a pathetic joke, Ball? Probably not.
 | 
Pages: 1
Prev: rupie's dark scary secret (sodomized as a child)
Next: Derek, what's a vegan?