Pathetic Fallacy?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

It’s pathetic to label something a pathetic fallacy. For instance, “the dancing of the leaves” is called a pathetic fallacy, but what else are you supposed to say? Am I going to paintstakingly map out the exact path and rotations of quasirandom particulate behaviors? No, the dance of leaves conveys just enough information, no more, no less, and I stick to it thank you. I’d prefer if you didn’t call it a fallacy, or pathetic, asshole.

People are either too poetic, or not poetic enough. There is a certain scope, a certain magnification needed, and so called “pathetic fallacies” often give the most clarity, so they should be used with joy!

2

clichés should also be used with joy. People think just because it’s a cliché then it is automatically not true, or it doesn’t hold enough significance to be applied, this may be the definition of the word in itself, but the content still applies greatly, over exposure doesn’t negate the reality of it!

3

The Pathetic Fallacy is neither Pathetic, or a Fallacy. You saw me recently mention it, but I wouldn’t back a actual Logical Fallacy as my position is that they aren’t legitimate to use in philosophy in the manner we use them (it’s a academic ploy to declare logical fallacy, usually when a academic is clearly losing the debate, and usually deserves to).

I think you should at least look at John Ruskin’s use of it. He is a pretty decent philosopher. I use his ideas in The Nature of Gothic a lot on this site in disguised form (not so much that I’m hiding it than I’ve built upon it).

John Ruskin didn’t prohibit people from using the Pathetic Fallacy, he merely noted it’s annoying overuse by the poets of his era, akin to Ron Burgundy joke by late twenty, early thirty men today, and wanted the annoying trend to stop. Its not used much anymore, so feel free to knock it out. Its had a rivival in North Korean literature.

4

There is a faction, shall we say, that wants to devitalize as much as it can. Animals are machines, plants are machines, and certainly consciousness is a radical exception, the universe is mostly dead and can be looked at mechanically and we can control it. Call it a reductionist faction, or a modular faction who wants to break everything down into pieces it can patent and sell. This faction is threated and feels great hatred of anything that vitalizes. That sees life as internally expanded, having an internal dimension. Anything that implies perspectives and motivations. In extreme form this faction even turns on humans and considers them DNA machines, who see consciousness as a mere epiphenomenon. So if you mention dancing leaves, you are a sick, Romantic, anthropomorphizer and dangerous.

5

humans are crude dna machines.

6

Pathetic fallacies and cliches are not the same. Some pathetic fallacies are cliches and some cliches are pathetic fallacies. But a pathetic fallacy can be an entirely new phrase or trope.

7

crude compared to what? And no humans are not machines.

8

There is no “a” to the pathetic fallacy, it is a style of poetic writing that was getting on John Ruskin’s nerves.

Anything you write is more right or wrong to a set of factual standards, John hit it on one aspect of this. He was right. But John didn’t mean a fallacy like in the sense of a logical fallacy, there are times you can use the pathetic fallacy and be factually correct, and even stylistically pleasing. He was a art critic as much as a philosopher.

He used 19th century language, the pathetic fallacy is neither pathetic, nor a fallacy. I don’t think anyone here is grasping this.

9

It’s pathetic in the sense of emotions -

pathetic (adj.) Look up pathetic at Dictionary.com
1590s, “affecting the emotions, exciting the passions,” from Middle French pathétique “moving, stirring, affecting” (16c.), from Late Latin patheticus, from Greek pathetikos “subject to feeling, sensitive, capable of emotion,” from pathetos “liable to suffer,” verbal adjective of pathein “to suffer” (see pathos). Meaning “arousing pity, pitiful” is first recorded 1737. Colloquial sense of “so miserable as to be ridiculous” is attested from 1937. Related: Pathetical (1570s); pathetically. Pathetic fallacy (1856, first used by Ruskin) is the attribution of human qualities to inanimate objects.

It is not pathetic as in weak impotent and so on.

Ruskin was not against the use of this, as long as it fit the context. I think he did consider it a fallacy. IOW it was true in in a literal take on a poem, but could be true as a trope, the emotional qualities attributed to non-human things being really in the humans - the author or whoever the poem was about.

It has since become an accusation that does include the paradigmatic assumptions that I think Ruskin also had, but could consider ok or even wonderful in trope form.

It should not be confused with cliches.

10

I’m more accepting of this last post of your’s Moreno.

I’all bring up this paradox though…

Lets say you, as a epic poet, was observing a army making a movement against your formation, and the best terms available were terms in your language associated with insect behavior. You have to Anthromorphize (Insectamorphize?) the character of the Army.

Now let’s say coincidently, the exact same phenomena was observable in the flow of water, such as the Chinese emphasis on comparing the flow if water to movements of an Army. Would a pathetic fallacy be factually incorrect, would setting up a three thousand year tradition alayzing the flow of water to that of humans be wrong? It includes emotive characteristics as well, the cogniyive-emotive cycle of the morale of armies.

It depends deeply on the flexibility of the language, and ty he literary background of concepts. Ruskin was very correct in getting annoyed as fuck, but he didn’t create a prohibitive fallacy. Its not a fallacy of the sort a badly trained Harvard Professor would toss around ignorantly in a debate, but rather a observation on the use of language that had gotten out if control, overused and generically abused. It was a era of bad literature. But it doesn’t make it inherently wrong to use, it depends on other factors. Its 100% acceptable for the modern Chinese army to use this to this day, sorta okay… a bit of a cop out, for literary circles in North Korea to use this (naughty environment destroying the vision of Kim Jung Un, he tries so hard for us. There is a element of truth to this, but it disguises rancid, incompetent government)… it’s absolutely fucking wrong for the global warming movement to exploit. I’m not sacrificing my lifestyle to appease the angry sun God so that he will forgive us of our sins against the environment.

It depends on a lot of other stuff. A logical fallacy exists independent of time and all reason, like a Greek Titan, just bashes and breaks arguments, and we don’t know why. Just does, and only He-Man Professors are allowed to weild them, and declare them whenever, whatever the circumstances to save their asses. He doesn’t present the idea in this concept, he is just begging poets to knock that shit off and become more insightful authors. And they did. Feel free to use it if it works, just… don’t be a stereotypical douchebag in asserting it, no one needs bad poetry, the market is already saturated with enough bad shit as it is.

11

Can I just say something here please. The pathetic fallacy is only a logical fallacy if the metaphor drawn between the object which is given the human characteristic and the meaning of the characteristic itself interferes with the truth of the conclusion of the argument. For example, the wind ‘raced’ by, and that which races is awesome, therefore the wind is awesome. It’s a valid and sound argument insofar as the wind can REALLY race. But wind doesn’t race. People and vehicles race. Wind moves and can be fast, but it doesn’t litteraly race.

And of course I’ll bring vitkenshtein into this. What’s happening here is a confusion created from the proximity, or family resemblance, of words and phrases. The word race is used in a grammatically legal way as a verb, but because of the anthropomorphism there, the conclusion can’t be true without granting the metaphor.

You can’t grant metaphors in philosophical arguments. Leave that to the poets.

12

You can have metaphors as the basis of arguments, you can’t have empericism otherwise, it’s eventually broken down to what we can point at. A metaphor is a good basis for making induction to a deduction, where language is otherwise inappropriate. You can give inanimate objects emotions just as factually as animate, because it’s truth of having a cognitive state isn’t under consideration, but how we decide to observe and react.

If I can give a simple simile to explain a task, such as a military order, and the troops can understand it better that way, then it’s correct as far as the coordination of language is concerned. This is why the idea survives in military texts in Asia (to wonderful effect, they are right in many ways for doing so, Chinese Civilization is based on this in fact)… it deposits correct information that can be expanded and illuminated upon by metaphor with exact behavioral precision. But it’s wrong under other kinds of logic.

It comes down to the linguistic question, is a White Horse still a Horse? No… we would say in the west it’s because not all horses are White, so a non-white horse would be disqualified as a horse, white and horse are two different things. What qualifies John Ruskin’s Pathetic Fallacy as still being acceptible is yes, it can be if it achieves the effect… you don’t want to send out a ranchboy confused with the White Horse Paradox out to collect the horses before a blizzard to put in the barn, only to discover he didn’t collect any of the white horses cause they weren’t horses. Language is distributed on the basis of effectiveness. Its why Frontinus wrote both on military matters and linguistic/visual paradoxes of communication. Your argument Zoots wouldn’t match up against some of his historic observations. He was one of the great minds of antiquity, I’m deeply indebted to him.

Best of luck finding white horses in a blizzard. You find them, the boy might be a smart ass and say they aren’t white horses, but dead horses.

13

You’re jumping all over the place again dude. Don’t do it… You know I don’t have a computer and I’m not gonna race you on a phone.

This thread is about the pathetic fallacy, a simple informal fallacy. This has northing to do with white horses or black swans or falsifiability or inductive deductive rushkins or nominalism, either. It’s just a neat little observation that the use of metaphors in statements can be misleading. Look up a coupe examples of the fallacy and see how and why it is called a fallacy… What it is doing in the statement, how and why it is causing a logical problem.

14

You’re jumping all over the place again dude. Don’t do it… You know I don’t have a computer and I’m not gonna race you on a phone.

This thread is about the pathetic fallacy, a simple informal fallacy. This has northing to do with white horses or black swans or falsifiability or inductive deductive rushkins or nominalism, either. It’s just a neat little observation that the use of metaphors in statements can be misleading. Look up a coupe examples of the fallacy and see how and why it is called a fallacy… What it is doing in the statement, how and why it is causing a logical problem.

15

First I think anthropomophizing is not incorrect as a rule. IOW I do not think attributing emotions, intentions, etc. to non-human ‘things’ is necessarily incorrect. Nor do I think moving in the other direct need be false. Literally.

From there I think that metaphors can be useful as tropes that are intended as tropes. They highlight facets of experiences. They elicit useful images that aid in understanding. And so on.

He didn’t think so. Neither do I.

It seemed like part of what you are saying is that it is not a fallacy in the sense of, say, the fallacy of exclusive premises. Nor even like an informal fallacy like fallacy of composition.

The Pathetic Fallacy is not a meta-point. It is a philosophical position, or at least, the term implies one strongly. That attributing emotions, etc. to, say, plants is wrong factually. Right or wrong, This is a position, not a point of logic.

As far as aesthetics, well, I see no reason to eliminate these kinds of tropes, and even think it is fine if the author thinks his car has a soul. and writes like it. This might lead to a great poem, it might not. I find it hard to believe an angry plastic yoghurt container would end up as part of a great poem. But maybe a good one not to my taste. And hell, I am panpsychist.

16

I feel like most of the reading material I go through is overly complicated and as such very boring. People do prefer poetry to logic. I see long drawn out stuff that needs revised and thought through much better. Even when it’s not a lot of text it’s just too much nonsense.

I hate it because I don’t write that way. I’m a logical thinker. And that also makes me a bit of a perfectionist.

17

“I feel like most of the reading material I go through is overly complicated and as such very boring”

The complexity of an answer is proportionate to the complexity of the question, so something is not overly complicated unless it exceeds what is necessary for the closest shave with occams razor.

this does happen often in philosophy, yes, but not always. Sometimes you might think you recognize what is being explained and feel like its being complicated, but you may neither recognize or understand what is really being explained.

Now you can hold your ground and still give philosophy the room it needs to work… and instead of saying your bored (which is a little pretentious…I know, I do it all the time), you could just say youre uninterested. That offends a philosopher even more than saying youre bored, and I’ll tell you why.

A bored audience may be bored because they haven’t the aptitude to understand what is happening. But a person who is uninterested is usually the one who understands and dismisses. The philosopher is more offended by the competent uninterested party than he is the incompetent, insulting party. To the second he can say “what I’m saying is not boring and you are an idiot”. To the first he can only blush and desperately plead “but…but, its an intriging subject and I thought I did a good job. How is this uninteresting?”

Truthfully, to be able to get away with calling philosophy boring you have to be qualified to explain yourself philosophically… and if you do that you’re doing philosophy… so now you’re calling yourself boring. Ergo; philosophy cannot be boring, only philosophers can be boring.

In any event if you keep what I said in mind you’ll fair better amoung the intelligentsia. Diplomacy and statecraft is essential to gaining and keeping the upperhand in your relationships to philosophers. Your a Libra so you’re supposed to be diplomatic.

review:

  1. Never assert that an explanation is overly complicated unless you are quite capable and ready to explain why without complication.

  2. A philosopher is, ironically and for reasons we described above, more insulted if he is uninteresting rather than merely boring.