tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4213316015209503694.post5500680331022717064..comments2024-01-22T01:52:37.473-06:00Comments on RENEGADE TRADS: Internal DialogueA Sinnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05083094677310915678noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4213316015209503694.post-3561278702683844282011-12-27T07:41:03.666-06:002011-12-27T07:41:03.666-06:00Have you come across the term ‘Bulverism’? I thin...Have you come across the term ‘Bulverism’? I think it is a form of <i>petitio principii</i>; it was coined by CS Lewis, who was prone to it himself. You could also think of it as ‘mind-reading’: assuming you have privileged insights into your interlocutor’s mind and motivations.<br /><br />From an essay called <i>Bulverism</i> (1941):<br /><br />+++<br />You must show <i>that</i> a man is wrong before you start explaining <i>why</i> he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion <i>that</i> he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly. In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it “Bulverism”. Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third — “Oh you say that <i>because you are a man</i>.” “At that moment”, E. Bulver assures us, “there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.” That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.<br />+++<br /><br />Most liturgy discussions (including quite a few on this blog) are prone to Bulverisms. ‘Traddies promote the Tridentine Mass because they are nostalgic’; ‘liberals want to get rid of altar rails because they have unacknowledged sexual sins’, etc. <br /><br />I mention Bulverism only because internal dialogues – well, mine at least – slip so very easily into this fallacy. Perhaps yours don’t. After all, I ought to be able to read my own mind … and so I imagine the other person, and readily dissect his arguments by analysing the psychological motivations for them, rather than looking at their veracity.<br /><br />There are other logical traps that internal dialogue falls into, for example self-evident truths or self-sealing arguments (‘Anyone who knows anything about rite and symbol will tell you that …’). <br /><br />The best corrective is a supportive but critical friend – a real one – who will take the fallacious thinking apart. As you say, there is nothing like a real conversation with a real person.<br /><br />Thanks for all your fine work on this blog. A very happy Christmas to you!cor ad cor loquiturhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12451088364358322952noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4213316015209503694.post-46717573957854751542011-12-25T14:17:23.336-06:002011-12-25T14:17:23.336-06:00"there is nothing comparable to actually bein..."there is nothing comparable to actually being an active and integral participant in mind speaking to mind and heart speaking to heart; this is Trinitarian relationality at its best." - aww, I love this!!<br /><br />I too have conversations in my head all the time, though for me I find that a lot of my internal dialogue is novel-writing. I am constantly narrating or imagining how to delicately word things that are difficult to narrate (most of the best things are!)... I think blogging also sets the essay-writing wheels in motion, for me. Sometimes tied to conversation, other times simply to observation. But I do weirdly have primary characters in my head - friends or acquaintances in real life - who for some reason seem like people I feel the need to be able to explain things to.Amyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05891386419594423687noreply@blogger.com