Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Tonight's Logic Class - "Doubt" (or any movie for that matter) Is Better Than "Elf"

Tonight in my Logic class I will present my logical argument that the movie "Doubt" is better than the movie "Elf." The argument can be found here.

A few additional comments:

  1. To compare "Elf" with "Doubt" is surely unfair, a bit like "Godzilla vs. Bambi."
  2. I have to this day never watched the movie "Elf." I did see "Doubt." I doubt that "Elf" is any good, for reasons I give in my argument.
  3. How can I argue that "Doubt" is better than "Elf" if I have never seen "Elf?" The answer is: my argument is an a priori argument. Philosopher Galen Strawson described an a priori argument this way: "You can see that it is true just lying on your couch. You don't have to get up off your couch and go outside and examine the way things are in the physical world. You don't have to do any science." Kant showed us that there is such a thing as a priori knowledge. The statement "Doubt" is better than "Elf" is an analytic statement, not a synthetic statement. Analytic statements (or propositions) are true in virtue of their meaning alone. Such as, e.g., A bachelor is an unmarried man. Therefore one does not need to see "Elf" to know it is a poorer movie than "Doubt" (or any other movie, for that matter).