Sarah Palin’s Amazing Circular-Logic Foreign Policy Argument

Speaking in a her third major interview (including the televised soft-ball pitch on FOX News weeks ago), Sarah Palin responded to criticisms about her foreign policy experience. While speaking with CBS’s Katie Couric the following exchange took place:

Couric: “You’ve cited Alaska’s proximity to Russia as part of your foreign policy experience. What did you mean by that?”

Palin: “That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land– boundary that we have with– Canada. It– it’s funny that a comment like that was– kind of made to– cari [sic]– I don’t know, you know? Reporters–[sic]“

And then later in the interview:

Couric: “Explain to me why that [Alaska's proximity to Russia] enhances your foreign policy credentials.”

Palin: “Well, it certainly does because our– our next door neighbors are foreign countries. They’re [sic] in the state that I am the executive of. And they’re in Russia–”

Well, despite giving a somewhat befuddled explanation, and at once point giving up on being able to complete a sentence, Mrs. Palin’s response nonetheless bears some logical brilliance. Essentially her reasoning boils down to is something like this: the reason Alaskan proximity to Russia is relevant to foreign policy is because Alaska is close in proximity to Russia.  

The basic form of her argument may be represented as something along the lines of: “if a, then b” because “if a, then b.” And even more simply ”a=a.” 

This is actually attempting a logically irrefutable form of argument, known as petitio principii. However, people have given such arguments very unfortunate labels like circular, tautologous, and question begging, or no argument at all. Although without looking at the truth value of the statements, or overall soundness of the argument, the form of such arguments are perfectly consistent and valid. More complicated and famous forms of this kind of argument include:

1. God exists, because the Bible says so.                                                    

2. The Bible is accurate because it is the Word of God.

(Long a form offered by the evangelical right of which Mrs. Palin is both a fan and star).

Unfortunately, many Americans may challenge the major (and only) premise of Palin’s argument. Nearly half of the states in the United States either border by land or share a narrow maritime border with a foreign country. And yet few people would claim living or even having executive responsibility in such a state would give them foreign policy experience. Palin pointed to the fact that Alaska has foreign trade envoys, but most states have trade envoys much  larger than Alaska’s (whose entire population is less than half the size of the Phoenix AZ), and many states exist with far more embassy locations and degree of international travel and tourism.

Sometimes even strong logic cannot escape harsh reality.

Wikipedia and My Theory of Truth

I was reading this article in the New Yorker recently on the ongoing battle between Wikipedia and the quote-unquote “legitimate” enclyopedic sources such as Encylopedia Brittanica. Wiki made the claim that a random sampling of their entries produced as many, or in some cases fewer errors than the other leading “for pay” sources, such as Brittanica. This included, when looking at, for example, science articles. Brittanica fired back claiming that the very nature of an open-source encylcopedia, without professional paid contributers, de-legitamizes the online encylopedia as a valid tool of reliable information. Anyways, long story short, this got me thinking about the nature of truth. Here’s a basic run down of what I remember about the leading theories of truth from my philosophy days:

The Correspondence Theory of Truth, the one most people are naively familiar with, says there is a an “objective reality”, and the value of a statement depends on how well a statement correspondends to the true state of affairs. Obviously there are some big problems with this way of thinking.

The Constructivist Theory of Truth says the exact opposite, there is no absolute objective truth, embracing the phrase “verum ipsum factum” or “truth itself is contsrtucted”, namely by a combination of convention, human perception, and most importantly, social experience. This is pretty nebulous for most poeple to buy much stock into.

There are many other notable ones defining and dealing with truth in a number of ways form the absolute metaphysical, such as the Coherence theory, to truth as a kind of mundane operation, like the American Pragmatists and reductive Mathematical theories of truth, and so on. However with a complete and typical lack of philosophical rigor I’m just going to suggest the best one to look at is really the Consensus Theory of truth (truth without a capital “T”). Here’s how Wiki defines it:

“Consensus theory holds that truth is whatever is agreed upon, or in some versions, might come to be agreed upon, by some specified group.” (I wanted to use the Encyclopedia Brittanica defintion too, but they wanted me to pay a monthly subscription to get access).

I say this is the best one because it is the theory that those Brittainiacs seems to rely on in saying they are better, and always will be, than their open source counterparts. Since they rely upon professionals and experts to draft their articles; a vested class of scientencia versus the huddled masses of any and all the laypersons with a PC and an internet connection.

Note the very democratic feature of this kind of truth-theory. Experts are like elected know-it-alls, which like a Congress, get together and tells us what’s up. It’s a bit elitist, but the point is well taken. No one has time to do a genuine scientific or other kind of enquiry into all the random dideradata that come up in it everyday modern life. Knowledge is social, and for the most part decided upon by experts in their specific arena of understanding.

But what Brittanica seems to neglect in opening this big can of metaphysical worms, is that under a Consensus theory of truth, the power is ultimately derived from mutual agreement by the people. And that which they grant, can be easily taken away. I don’t know the exact figures, but undoubtedly Wiki online users greatly outnumber Brittanica subscribers, because it is more accesible, covers more areas (I recently read whole articles on comedian Yakov Smirnoff use of “Russian Reversals”, the complete Radiohead discography, and the Third Season of ABC’s Lost), and most importantly it’s free. Also because Wikipedia is open source, it’s more accurately reflects what a greater number of people mutual agree upon. Articles are not written by one hired professional and edited by a small team, Wiki articles are collectively written and edited by thousands and thousands of contributers. This truly embodies the consensus genitum, “that which is universal among men carries the wieght of truth”.

Probably due to the fact that wiki articles are not fixed expressions of knowledge, currently citing to Wikipedia articles for academic purposes is not en vogue (though it has now started to be used in some US Court Cases and even by US reference librarians as a research tool), but as Wikipedia and other open-source forms of information become more universal, and as technological advances protect against deliberate vandalism, it does have the feature of even further capturing the constantly shifting dynamic of what majority of people agree to be true.

As tecnologist Joi Ito has put it, the difference boils down to “whether something is more likely to be true coming from a source whose resume sounds authoritative or a source that has been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people (with the ability to comment) and has survived.” Whether you see truth as Democratic or Darwinian, Wikipedia seems to be doing well on all fronts, and dinosuars like Brittanica seem to be suffering at the polls, possibly from a bad case of sour grapes, and arguably some seriously specious philosophical reasoning.