30 January 2014

Logic and writing templates

The little writing book _They say, I say_ is a very pleasant surprise. A colleague recommended I use it in the senior capstone seminar I'm teaching this semester, and so I adopted it sight unseen. I just got it today, and I can tell I'll like it very much.

A few thoughts, prompted as I read the introduction.

[1] Writing templates---strings such as "some object that... though I concede that... I still maintain that..."---serve an obvious practical goal, which I applaud. But they also raise an interesting side question about how logic and rhetoric are intertwined.

The "..." in the templates are obviously meant to be replaced by some content; hence they are extra-logical. But that means that logical bits are needed to create the desired relationships among those contents expressed in the total information. But the templates include rhetorical bits that do some of that work. "Though I concede that" has both a _logical form_, when combined with the informational content suppressed as "...", as well as a _capacity to help persuade the hearer_ to agree to some view (or at least---presumably---to be sympathetic to that view). 

What feature of "though I concede that..." carries the logical information, and what feature carries the rhetorical information? Classic pragmatic-semantic interface issues. I wonder how students "feel" that issue play out as they write.

[2] The authors stress heavily that writing is dialectical---a push-pull between writer as reader (capturing what "they say") and writer as writer (putting forth what "I say"). It occurs to me that there are several ways to flesh this out. The dialectic can be _adversarial_, _synthetic_, _analytic_, or maybe some other way altogether.

The adversarial dialectic pits opposing views against one another. The (hopeful) result is a "push upward"---that is, a resultant force responding to the force due to the feeder forces. The "new truth" is widely seen by its advocates as correcting certain excesses in the philosophy of logic and knowledge---the sort of thing we might suppose Socrates to have gotten right, and many of the rest of us to have gotten wrong. The synthetic dialectic is similar, but the emphasis is on the co-making of that resultant force. The analytic dialectic, unlike the other two, can be thought of as a synthetic dialectic with a downward arrow, if you'll allow me to continue the slightly opaque metaphor. That is, the push is really a pull down toward that which is fundamental.

The abstract inference that occurs to me: Push in this context can be thought of as encryption, pull as extraction. Writing then is a back-and-forth between encrypting processes applied to information, and extracting processes likewise applied to information.

The less abstract punch line: a writer aims at the spot where a bit of information shows more than anyone has a right to expect.

29 January 2014

Could slaves be legal agents?

About the most depressing topic in legal theory is slave law.

There must have been legal principles at work as the various American colonies and states wrote laws to regulate their slave populations; if there were principles, there is work for philosophers and logicians to do. I find it an obnoxious and disagreeable thing to think about, and I think it's a permanent, weird stain on the body of law we rightly admire otherwise. But somebody's got to figure it out. It might as well be me--and those of you who've wandered by.

Let me carve out some space for a question.

Did the slave codes see the Negro slave as a legal agent for their master (in the contract-law sense of representative agent)? I'm reminded of an Oliver Wendell Holmes discussion (1891) about agency and contracts as deriving from masters who commission their slaves to act on their behalf, and the thicket of obligations resulting therefrom. It's intriguing to think that so central a tenet of both common law and American law arose from Roman slavery. I wonder how that walks back to American slave law.

There are empirical aspects to that question: What actual legal protections were guaranteed in slave codes? And what protections from masters were guaranteed? (...thereby raising the weird but intriguing question: how did slave-era law seek to protect slaves?)

There's a counterfactual-ish follow-on question as well: Could a Negro slave be a legal principal (in the contract-law sense of one who empowers a representative)? That is, if a slave could be an extension of their master's power as a representative, could they reciprocate? Or perhaps pass responsibility down the chain a bit? Could they delegate another? And if so, do they as an author of obligation have a presence in the law as such?

On the other hand, if they can't be principal, but agent only, is that a stable legal concept? If an entity cannot be the author of such a power, does that not imply that they cannot be the one on whom such power is conferred? What faculty do they lack such that they cannot be principal, and how is it that that lack doesn't thereby ill-suit them for agency altogether?

Here's a clearly philosophical aspect to the Negro-as-legal-agent question: Can the legal protections afforded slaves be understood using other legal frameworks (for example, property law as opposed to contract law)? How should we decide which conceptual framework to use?

A perfectly parallel question can be posed, but focused on Negro-as-criminal-menace instead: Did the slave codes see the Negro slave as a criminal menace to their master?

Empirical aspects: What restrictions were placed on Negro slaves? What slave-to-slave constraints were instituted (that is, constraints on socializing among blacks of different status--free, slave)?

Counterfactual-ish follow-on: Could a Negro slave be a crime victim? If not, why not? Surely someone who can be criminal is capable of the responsibility to follow the law; they are criminal only if they fail to do so. But if they cannot assume responsibility, and so must always be viewed as the ward of another (say, their master), and so cannot be treated legally as one whose property has been stolen, or who has been illegitimately subject to bodily harm, etc., how then could they be treated as criminal at all?

And a philosophical aspect: Can the legal restrictions be understood using other legal frameworks (for example, piracy law, terrorism statutes, property and vandalism statutes)? Is there a way to understand the restrictions in terms of contract law? What would guide the choice of conceptual framework?

(Will Holmes as legal pragmatist be able to help us here? Will Hart and the positivists? Don't know. Doubtful right now, though. Jurists and positivists hate this kind of question.)

21 January 2014

This blog will live here a little longer

I blogged here a few years ago, and then let things go quiet. I've decided to revive this blog, and am planning to move it to my own site, but my HTML skills are a little rusty and everything takes longer than you think and all that. So for now I'll post here. Maybe a few days longer (especially now that snow has bought me a little time...).
I'm currently buried in philosophy of law and the logic of toys and games. So my next posts will work that over.
Talk soon, all.