On Keats’ Beauty and Truth
What follows are e-mails on the topic of Keats’ idea of the relationship between Beauty and Truth as described in his "Ode on a Grecian Urn." The first three e-mails are private exchanges between Mr Stirling and me. The following threads between Mr Kramer and Mr Stirling were the initial discussions which were posted on the Phil_Lit listserve. Mr Stirling and Mr Kramer regularly contribute some of the most thoughtful, and sharply worded, postings. If you are interested in listening in on, or contributing to, this discussion list, look for the instructions found elsewhere on this site.
The purpose of the following exchanges is mainly to let you (my students) see the kind of intellectual energy even brief phrases can engender, and to allow you to consider the lines in a variety of lights.
Subject:
Re: Linguists' Pretensions Truth/Beauty
Date:
Sat, 17 Oct 1998 04:29:39 -0400
From:
"Scott M. Stirling" <sstirling@earthlink.net>
To:
"Mr. Bauld" <bbauld@geocities.com>
Dear Brian,
…I have thought about this Beauty/Truth thing every which way to try to see a
way through it. I can't. It seems to me that we are in danger of losing both
when we try to cling to them as a unity. God forbid beauty and truth should
ever be lost--but they never will, so it's not a worry. What is a worry is
that fewer people come to know what either of them are, where to find them,
and how to appreciate them all the better for knowing what distinguishes them.
Then we lose them even if they are out there staring us in the face. For, if
we think something is beautiful, does that make us justified in believing it
to be true as well? If we believe something is true, do we then know by
entailment that it is beautiful? Most important, if beauty and truth are
united, then what makes them different? Why have two words for the same
thing? If beauty is truth and truth is beauty, then they are like the morning
star and the evening star--to label them differently is a mere convenience
that says nothing about _them_, but only about our perspective.
My general definition for 'truth' is the classical one: a correspondence
between the mind and reality, apprehended by reason. My definition for
'beauty' is likewise classical: a _perceptually pleasing_ quality of certain
literary, aural, and visual objects that are ordered into a unified gestalt,
usually exhibiting harmony, contrast, repetition and variation in their parts.
i would be interested in how you keep these things separate. If you do not,
then what does either of them mean to you (since one is then equal to the other)?
I like Keats' poem on the aesthetic level. But I think the final statement is
typically Romantic, and is misplaced and vapid if it is supposed to be a true
statement. The object of art is the only thing that can and should be judged
by the aesthetician. What follows is recycled from a few months ago to an
aesthetician offlist. But I think it is germane to this discussion:
The moralist can judge Eliot [or Keats] on moral grounds, the logician on
logical, the scientist or classicist on other practical issues, where the art
critic cannot and should not _as an art critic_ or, in more subtle (and
realistic) situations, in the _mode_ of an art critic. The moralist and art
critic may even be the same person, but that makes it even more necessary that
the individual consider these things separately, since they really are
different and admit of different judgmental criteria. One does not judge
anti-Semitism by aesthetic or prosodic standards. One judges anti-Semitism by
moral standards (and scientific if there's racism involved). These things
must be kept as separate in our minds as they are in the world so that we may
think clearly about them. If the art critic is unable to separate these
things because of emotion or particular moral grounds, he should be honest
about it and not attempt to mislead himself or others about his lack of
objectivity.
The only thing that can stop one from using 'beauty' to mean anything one
likes is to define it and stick to the definition. Given my
definition, you will rarely find philosophic writing to be beautiful. The
ordering principles behind philosophical writing should be the purely
unembellished grammatical and logical. The poets order language into
beautiful poems (err, they used to anyway) according to aesthetic principles,
the rhetorician orders his speech according to the best means of persuasion
(unfortunately many philosophers today, such as Richard Rorty, are more
rhetorician than philosopher, despite their own avowals), and the scientist
and philosopher order their language to achieve the clearest expression
possible for the conveyance of their ideas and discoveries, which are
presented for debate, testing, and as results of inquiry. So literary texts
are judged by aesthetic and/or poetic criteria, whereas philosophic texts are
judged by the logic and truth of the philosopher's argument and the clarity of
his exposition. And though someone like Quine embellishes his philosophical
writing with clever and pleasing puns and metaphors, we must appreciate the
literary cleverness of that separately from the philosophical content. Just
as when reading Pope's _Essay on Criticism_, we must judge the didactic
principles by philosophical and scientific criteria independently of the
aesthetic criteria by which we judge the aesthetic structure of the lines and
couplets of the poem…
Sincerely,
Scott S.
_____________________________________________________
Subject:
Re: Beauty and Truth--redux
Date:
Mon, 19 Oct 1998 23:36:23 -0300
From:
"Mr. Bauld" <bbauld@geocities.com>
To:
sstirling@EARTHLINK.NET
Dear Scott,
Warning: sporadic thoughts heading your way:
I can't see that Keats was urging us to a philosophical analysis of any part of his poem, so,
if not, what was he urging? What was his intention, however misguided? i.e to hell with
definitions; what experience (beyond thought) is he trying to communicate? Is it merely the
result of good digestion, or is it experience of the divine? The definitions must be in the poem,
and then decide if he's on or not. Has the poem suggested or demonstrated the way the two may
be thought of as one? Could he admit to Beauty and Truth as separates but still be able to
suggest a Beauty/Truth third option experience? I don't really hear many people speak of this
in Amherst, although I have heard the beholder line enough. Indeed, most students would have
trouble dealing with the line, partly because they may limit their sense of what can be
beautiful to a set of stock experiences, or because they have a limited, rational, sense of
what truth must be. Are there such things as "unheard melodies" or not? Is it common sense to
talk of having ears which are not sensual but hear better than sensual ones?(what are "ditties
of no tone"?) This sounds more like religious talk than philosophical. It is poetical language
and in as much as the idea interests me, it is in its poetic origins and impact. Did Plato
ever prove his Ideals? Or, do we embrace what "speaks to us", using Reason, as Donne says,
only as God's Viceroy, and not letting him usurp the whole town.
I think the experience of beauty in this Keatsian way is a lot more common "sense" than the
sense required to read, say, Heidegger. I have little hope of finally knowing whether Keats'
line can be contained within the circles of Urizen, and I guess that skilled philosophers have
not much more. I am drawn to the fairness of a Creation which allows the experience of the
divine to enter quite separate from the number of degrees one carries. On the level of "all
human breathing passion" there must certainly be a need for the watchdogs of reason to protect
us from confusion, but, yes, I hear Keats on another mystical, if you will, level, and suffer
occasional fits of melancholy for being a failure at it. Still, these days failure is some
success, since it posits an end.
The Beauty Keats speaks of is that which art/urns can inspire, but properly understood I take
the art object to be a guide to seeing all creation in this way. We might argue about what can
most easily inspire this transcendence (out of time like eternity he says), and so argue about
the relative beauties/efficiencies of the art object, but when I consider what they point us
to, I think of Vincent Scannel's four year old boy holding the beauty of a dead bloodied dog,
or Williams "seeing" his redwheelbarrow triad, or Hopkins buckling under the "brute beauty" of
the windhovering kestrel, and think that their experience of beauty is felt as truth.
What a marvellous reply you have offered. I'll not expect much more from you and don't feel
that we disagree much. I hear your concern for beauty and truth, and your desire to maintain
their integrity and I'm happy to see them get whatever support they can find in the midst of
such universal sneering (or is it just a local storm?) You have me spotted, so I'm sure what I
say above is no news. I am often worried about how closely I veer to the edge of that
postmodern cliff when I get to defending the nonrational. I'm a big fan of Blake but can see
how the pomo crowd would easily claim him for their own when he attacks Newton, or pleads for
the poor. Still, I think the poets offer, as Dylan says, shelter from the storm. At some
point(soon) I'd like to post your posts on this topic for my students to see how vigorously
the notion can be grasped. Is that OK?…
Again, though, what experience do you take Keats to be describing/imagining however much he
may be confused? Is it just the experience of beauty alone? Would he not have a highly
developed beauty sense and be trying to describe something further? Or is it just hyperbole? I
don't think its defenders would try to prove the statement, although they might offer
testimony. I've always been interested in the testimony more than the proof…
Brian
bbauld@istar.ca
_________________________________________________________
Subject:
Re: Preface to the Lyrical Ballads
Date:
Tue, 10 Nov 1998 19:47:12 -0500
From:
"Scott M. Stirling" <sstirling@earthlink.net>
To:
"Mr. Bauld" <bbauld@geocities.com>
Brian,
I still haven't properly replied to your previous email. But I have
been meaning to. You asked, more or less rhetorically, about unheard
melodies and "ditties of no tone." To which I think the most reasonable
reply is that of course there are not ditties of no tone or unheard
music. These things don't exist, and we both know it. But the
questions remain--what is Keats driving at? And how do we take such
things in poetry?
My answer to the second is that when such things are so consistently and
artfully arranged as Keats has them, we admire the poem for what it
is--a work of fine linguistic art--structured meanings and sounds--that
pleases us when we read it. The theme of paradox is one that runs
through the entire poem.
My answer to the first is that Keats was a spiritually minded person,
interested in a mysticism that transcended any particular religion. At
such a "level" or from such a vantage, I think Keats tapped into a
certain
same idea or practice that the Zen Buddhists have. The _koan_, the
Japanese Zen "riddles" that have no "answer" unless that they achieve
the psychological (or spiritual, if you prefer) effect intended. The
koan is a kind of rationality-breaker, meant to lead one to break out of
categorizing thought and to leave the Zen student with a pure experience
of concrete reality. I see Keats as doing essentially the same thing,
though in an inimitably Western way, and mixing it up with literary
poetry and verse because of his Romantic beliefs in the purifying and
ethical powers of beauty and truth.
The lines about unheard melodies and ditties of no tone could just as
easily be rendered in prose, by themselves. Nothing is or can be made
less or more true by _how_ it is said or expressed. Our impression of
things, our attitude toward things, our remembrance of things can be
influenced by style and form of expression, but whether a
statement is true is a matter of logical value independent of aesthetic,
ethical, rhetorical, or other values.
____________________________________________________________
Subject:
Beauty is Truth and Truth Beauty . . .
Date:
Sun, 4 Oct 1998 12:26:05 -0400
From:
"Scott M. Stirling" <sstirling@EARTHLINK.NET>
To:
PHIL-LIT@postal.tamu.edu
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Lawrence Kramer asserts that Keats was right about the identification of truth
with beauty, implying, I think, a reference to the final lines of Keats'
famous poem, 'Ode on a Grecian Urn.' The poem ends in two lines that are
often quoted as an aphorism:
'When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou sayst,
Beauty is Truth,--Truth Beauty,--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
Cleanth Brooks has a whole article on this poem in his book _The Well Wrought
Urn_. He certainly seems to take the phrase as a merely trite expression
initially, but then investigates further to see whether we should take the
last two lines as an assertion from Keats himself, or as something written on
the urn, or as something the fictional narrator of the poem is asserting. And
then, how are we to take the lines? Still as trite? True? Poetic?
Likewise, in Brooks and Warren's _Understanding Poetry_, they offer as
questions following the poem (pp. 320-1, fourth edition): '4. Is the famous
concluding passage (lines 49-50) insisted upon as a philosophic generalization
in its own right? Does it represent the theme of the poem? Is it to be
regarded as a dramatic utterance spoken by the urn? The poet has said that
the urn 'tease[s] us out of thought / As doth eternity.' Do the last two
lines develop the same idea? If so, how? Is the timeless ideal world of the
urn as enigmatic as eternity? It bewilders our time-ridden human minds: it
teases us. Are the last two lines a teasing utterance or not? What is their
truth? Do the preceding forty-eight lines serve to define it?'
Keats' lines express an idea as old, at least, as the neo-Platonist Plotinus,
whose rhetorico-poetic discourses wove Beauty and Truth and the Good together
into one mystifying, homogenous mass of the One. Not very helpful if you are
interested in the world, science, knowledge, etc. Plotinus' beliefs on truth
and beauty, and the idea expressed in Keat's lines, make no real distinctions
between two things that it is very important to keep distinct. Primarily
because real ethics must be based on true knowledge about the world and
concerns individual acts, we should be clear that beauty, which is an
attribute of objects that attain a certain harmony and unity, repetition and
contrast in the ordering of their parts, is distinct from knowledge and truth,
and really not helpful at all in learning anything. If we do not make such
distinctions, we can be led down beautiful, rosy paths of destruction (the
road to hell is paved with gold, some say).
Anyway, Lawrence Kramer says:
>> A true argument supports an esthetic exposition in
>> a way that a corrupt one cannot.
A true argument cannot support an aesthetic exposition in its status as an
aesthetic exposition (and the converse is also true). An exposition can be a
beautiful work of language regardless of its truth value. We tend to like
aesthetic expositions that echo things we already believe (whether those
things we believe are actually true or not). But the consideration of truth
value is usually of very low importance in works that aim to be primarily
aesthetic. We should always verify or double-check from an outside,
non-poetic source if we think we have learned something we didn't already know
from a work of _fine_ art. A false argument in no ways undermines beauty,
because beauty is perceived by the senses and concerns _form_ (something about
which Plotinus and Plato were both confused), whereas truth is apprehended by
reason and concerns a correspondence between the mind and reality. We may
like a poem that has a true proposition or argument in it better than one that
doesn't because of ethical reasons, but a fine art critic (or educated and
experienced reader) should be first concerned with the form of a work, not its
truth value. Of course, these days (as in days in the past), such
distinctions have been lost, but what may be new today is that the artists in
the fine art community have lost these distinctions more than anybody.
>> Charlatans may resort to grandiloquence, but the
>> righteous are nonetheless well served by their
>> poetics.
I won't argue with this assertion, except to say that when a charlatan is also
an expert rhetorician, those who are not qualified to be the best judge of the
topic of discussion may well be swayed by poetic rhetoric. That is, the
righteous are indeed well served by poetics (I agree), but I disagree that the
arts of rhetoric and poetry are things only an honest person can employ, which
is what is implied by the above statement. And if a dishonest person can be
poetic and rhetorical, then there are lots of people he can persuade because
only he who is educated in all things (as Aristotle would say) is the best
judge of all things. Perhaps Lawrence Kramer has in mind only the poor
rhetoricians of our present age, whose rhetoric is fairly obvious, such as
Richard Rorty, Stanley Fish, and Jacques Derrida. But art should hide
itself--these guys are too obvious. Aristotle believed (as he says several
times in the _Art of Rhetoric_) that the true argument was naturally stronger
than the false one. I can think of several good reasons why that may be true,
but the main one is that Aristotle believed in self-evidence and may have
thought there was a natural inclination toward what was really true, given two
bare propositions to choose from. But there is nothing I have read in
Aristotle to suggest that beauty and truth were in any way identical, or that
a false argument would not benefit (in terms of its persuasiveness) from the
arts of rhetoric and poetry. After all, Aristotle thought one should be able
to argue the opposite of one's convictions as well as the truth, since that
would better enable the rhetor to dissect his opponent's rhetoric. Aristotle
is optimistic, but not naive. I would say it is somewhat naive to hold that
an utterly false argument could not be expressed beautifully.
Sincerely,
Scott M. Stirling
______________________________________________________________
Subject:
Truth and Beauty
Date:
Sun, 4 Oct 1998 19:38:05 -0400
From:
Lawrence J Kramer <REMARKL@PRODIGY.NET>
Reply-To:
Lawrence J Kramer <Lkramer@spidertek.com>
To:
PHIL-LIT@postal.tamu.edu
I have the corporate lawyer's habit of saying
things only one way at a time for fear that
repetition will introduce ambiguity. As a
consequence, I must urge readers to take into
account every word of what might be considered the
central assertion of my posts.
To wit, I wrote that a true argument supports an
aesthetic exposition _in a way_ that a false one
does not. Scott Stirling responds as if I said
that you can't tart up a bad apple:
"A true argument cannot support an aesthetic
exposition in its status as an
aesthetic exposition (and the converse is also
true). An exposition can be a
beautiful work of language regardless of its truth
value. "
If Scott's first sentence is true - and I confess
that I do not understand the "in its status..."
phrase - it is irrelevant to my argument because
the second sentence, which certainly is true, does
not respond to my claim that the beauty permitted
by a true statement is _different in kind_ from
that permitted by a false one.
I find, for example, that John Stuart Mill's essay
On Liberty is a thing of beauty, in part because
virtually all of my marginal "what about x's"
jotted as I read are ultimately dealt with at the
aesthetically correct time and place for dealing
with them. False arguments simply do not support
the unembarrassed precision and attentiveness to
detail that Mill's position makes possible. Bad
arguments can be beautifully put _in another way_
, but they cannot be made beautiful _in the way_
that a true argument can, and a discerning
audience should be able literally to feel the
truth of the argument from the uniquely
truth-confirming beauty it allows.
What I have in mind here is more an architectural
aesthetic than a linguistic one. The _rhetorical_
shape of a verbal exposition is limited by its
truth value, not because one cannot put lies in a
truth-affirming shape, but because, when put in
such a shape, lies become obvious.
Disingenuousness must hide; truth can seek the
light. The Feng Hsue (sp?) of the exposition
inheres in its truth value. I am talking about
the rhetorical equivalent of what mathematicians
call "elegance". There are no elegant proofs of
invalid theorems.
In light of the foregoing, for completeness's
sake, I explicitly demur to Scott's claim that my
"Charlatans may resort to grandiloquence, but the
righteous are nonetheless well served by their
poetics" implies that "the arts of rhetoric and
poetry are things only an honest person can
employ." Not only does the first part of my
sentence say explicitly, to me anyway, that the
dishonest _can_ employ the arts of rhetoric and
poetry, but I intended _in that sentence_ only to
support the use of poetry by the good guys,
whether or not the bad guys can use it, too.
I share what I take to be Scott's prudential view
that we should be careful lest we be seduced by
the silver-tongued orator. I believe, however,
that a prudent reluctance to judge an argument by
its aesthetics is merely a strategy that protects
us from our own weaknesses; it is not evidence
that such reluctance has no cost or that
rhetoricians ought not to try to overcome it.
Lawrence Kramer
Newtown, PA
Remarkl@prodigy.net
________________________________________________________________________________
Subject:
Re: Truth and Beauty
Date:
Tue, 6 Oct 1998 00:27:22 -0400
From:
"Scott M. Stirling" <sstirling@EARTHLINK.NET>
To:
PHIL-LIT@postal.tamu.edu
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
In fairness to Lawrence Kramer I have tried to make a thorough analysis of his
most recent post on this matter, particularly since he expresses concern at
having been misunderstood. I perhaps took as too symptomatic his assertion
that Keats was right, and my understanding of what he implied by that in the
context of which it was said (the remarks on Keats' poem, "Ode on a Grecian
Urn," that some may find relevant or at least mildly interesting). For I
believe that for anyone to claim that Keats was right about Truth being
identical with Beauty (if Keats did indeed mean to assert that in his poem as
a belief he held), one must not have thought too clearly on it. Not only
because I think the Grecian Urn's aphorism is demonstrably false, but because
to refer to Keats as an authority on such matters is one of the commonest
things one will hear from the literate and educated who, through formal
"education," have merely reinforced and festooned their common, unrefined
opinions with no less false lines from literature.
For what it is worth, I would first like to clarify something very crucial to
this matter which Lawrence Kramer confessed not to understand. I said 'a true
argument cannot support an aesthetic exposition in its status as an aesthetic
exposition.' To say it again more simply, there is nothing about beauty that
can be "supported" by truth or undermined by lies, as beauty is a quality of
matter having pleasing form, whereas truth is a specific kind of relation
(i.e., a correspondence) between the mind and reality. The theme of my entire
post--I am sure I am not the only one who grasped it, nor Lawrence the only
one who did not--was that Truth and Beauty are distinct and are separate
considerations in literature, argumentative discourse, painting, and so on. I
trust I made that abundantly clear in my previous post, so rather than repeat
it here I will beg a re-reading from Lawrence, as I have so carefully read and
re-read his post in response to me.
Lawrence takes 'aesthetic' in a loose sense, very common indeed, meaning
nothing more than 'well organized' or 'highly structured.' We are arguing
from quite different ideas of beauty and aesthetics. The example of Mill's
essay "On Liberty" points out nothing more than the excellent style of Mill's
exposition, more his adherence to the principles of clarity and logic than
anything having to do with aesthetic form. Lawrence affirms this
interpretation later when he says he is 'talking about the rhetorical
equivalent of what mathematicians call elegance.' What the mathematician
means comes from a stretch of the word 'elegance,' which comes from Latin
meaning something like 'to choose out from.' It has, as my Webster's
dictionary says, everything to do with 'scientific precision,' 'simplicity,'
and 'neatness.' But these are not necessary qualities of great poetry or
other fine art, though they may be present in part or all at once in some.
Lawrence adds that 'there are no elegant proofs of invalid theorems.' That is
a tautology, and it is beside the point because we are concerned not with the
supposed beauty of validity but of truth (or the supposed beauty-enhancing
powers of truth).
Ironically, Lawrence offers the following tortuous sentence, which is as an
amazing, if unintentional, oxymoron due to its nasty syntax and its coiled,
serpentine structure (not to mention its semantic opacity) which so
contradicts its, ostensibly, intended meaning: 'The rhetorical _shape_ of a
verbal exposition is limited by its truth value, not because one cannot put
lies in a truth-affirming shape, but because, when put in such a shape, lies
become obvious.' I would agree, in as much as that sentence is an example of
what it describes, but I don't think the lies _are_ that obvious in that
sentence. I have tried to unwind the sentence thus: 'The rhetorical shape of
a verbal exposition is limited by its truth value because when one puts lies
in a truth-affirming shape, they become obvious.' What is "shape" that is
rhetorical? What "shape" affirms truth? I can see how making syntactic
sentences is necessary for true propositions to be uttered, but semantics is
also necessary. Note the several subordinate clauses and the double use of
negation, as well as the puzzling meaning of such unusual semantic
juxtapositions such as 'shape' and 'truth-affirming,' in Lawrence's sentence.
Did he intend this to be an example or a counter-example? Is it bait for me?
I won't bite. Even if it were the most beautiful line of English verse I ever
read, I would still consider its truth apart from its beauty. If they both
were there in equal parts, I might say 'what a very good sentence, because it
is both beautiful _and_ true--but it would have been just as beautiful were it
less so true, and no less true were it a hoarse cacophany.'
Yours truly,
Scott M. Stirling
________________________________
email: sstirling@earthlink.net
www: http://home.earthlink.net/~sstirling/
mail: 2735 Windwood Dr., Apt. 93
Ann Arbor, MI 48105
Subject:
Beauty and Truth
Date:
Tue, 6 Oct 1998 08:52:13 -0400
From:
Lawrence J Kramer <REMARKL@PRODIGY.NET>
Reply-To:
Lawrence J Kramer <Lkramer@spidertek.com>
To:
PHIL-LIT@postal.tamu.edu
We see a lot on this list of people committing the
sins of which they complain. Scott Stirling seems
to take great glee in my confessing that I did not
understand his opaque comment, and yet has no
problem challenging my sentence about the
"rhetorical shape" of an argument and then (then!)
asking "What is "shape" that is "rhetorical?"
Ready. Fire! Aim. As David Myers likes to say, Tu
quoque, Scott?
But more to the point, I think it is wrong to
decouple aesthetics from utility. What is the
material advantage of an aesthetic sense? Why do
we find things beautiful at all? Whether or not
beauty can be counterfeited, I believe that a
sense of beauty provides valuable neurological
confirmation of semantic belief; that animals feel
beauty before they know truth. If this is so,
then certain types of beauty - I seem unable to
get Scott to come to grips with this concept - are
available only to sound argument.
I should say, I suppose, that I have in mind
analytic truth as opposed to synthetic truth. The
kind of beauty of which I speak is "available" to
structurally sound arguments that include false
minor premises. "All dogs have four feet; a
spider is a dog; therefore, a spider has four
feet" is as beautiful as the same logic applied to
Spot or Fido. It is the syllogism itself that is
beautiful because it sits well not only with my
inference engine but with the supporting neural
net I sometimes call my bullshit detector. Where
the falsehood of the minor premise is patent or at
least very much at issue, most arguers simply
eschew the syllogism, leaving them with arguments
whose "rhetorical shape" is not beautiful in the
way that the aforementioned syllogism is
beautiful.
That Scott cannot see the beauty in a well-wrought
argument attests not to the looseness of my
aesthetic but the narrowness of his. If I design
a building with too much base for its
superstructure, it will stand, and the people
inside it will be safe, but it will not be
beautiful. Likewise, I can construct a
"well-ordered" and "highly structured" argument
that lays too much groundwork for the point to be
demonstrated, given the receptiveness of the
audience. Such an argument will be semantically
true, but ugly. If, however, I use just the right
amount of syllogism, and just the right amount of
analogy, and just the right amount of Gotcha!, I
may have something that is not only convincing,
but a work of art. Such an argument is more than
"well-ordered" and "highly structured" - it is
beautiful. And that's the truth.
Lawrence Kramer
Newtown, PA
Remarkl@prodigy.net
(Working on how a sentence that says that the lies
in a bad argument are obvious can be an example of
itself if the lies therein are not obvious.)