
Originally Posted by
Politesse
I'm not sure what you mean by home-made. I have often noticed in my line of work that cultures tend to have specific ideas about argumentation; European-Americans, for instance, have a stereotype of being fond of cause-and-effect arguments. "We must do this, because this will happen if we don't. I knew this guy and he did this, so all members of that will probably also do that." There are always built-in premises to such arguments; either inference (what happens once will happen again) or authority (if someone you trust says that a cause has an effect it probably does) or class logic (all members or subjects of a category behave similarly and can therefore be predicted). By contrast, my Hopi colleagues seldom used class logic or even direct cause-and-effect arguments in the sense of time passing and having predictable effects, but nevertheless put a lot of store in precedent ("That's not how we are doing/have done things") and clan authority (unspoken: "The one who inherits family wisdom is also the most qualified to comment on current affairs") and story telling ("Yes, I went down to Gallup and saw something like that... A lot of crime down there in Gallup [unspoken inference: "if we do that, we'll be doing things like they do in Gallup, and there's crime down there too"].)
The thing I've noticed though, is that you can generally understand or "follow" the logic someone else is using, once it is explained. Even if you do not agree, or see their reasoning as valid, it's never so different that you can't "get" the argument they are constructing given a few minutes' explanation. While different communities have distinct styles of resaosning, I don't see how we could all make ourselves understood to one another unless there was some underlying cognitive framework that ties it all together. I've always found such conversations interesting, though I am no expert on philosophy, not having had any upper division schooling in that field.
Thanks for the examples.
I would agree that most people never really articulate anything like an argument. However, understanding each other requires that we infer what the other person means from what he says, and precisely because people don't bother to articulate what they mean (even on this board), you're left with the job of inferring meaning. Whether we succeed most of the time or not is not the point. The point is that we have to do it and be content with what we end up with because that's all we will ever have and that's the substance of our conversations. Thus, inference is crucial and while different people may be variously apt at doing it, we all have to do it. This also applies to everything that's going on around us, not just conversations.
The case of your Hopi friends is interesting. As I understand it, logical inference is mostly automatic. Most of the time, you don't have to think to get other people's point. For example, suppose we are talking about Trump. After ten minutes, someone says "Well, anyhow, all these politicians, they're just full of shit!". And that's it. Everybody understands the implication and nobody even has to think about it. You just understand the implication. It's automatic. In such cases, you in fact have to infer what inference is suggested, a kind of double implication. So while your typical Hopi guy may not feel like articulating anything very much, I would expect their mind is just as busy as anyone else's making automatic inferences all the time without asking the permission to do it. The fact that it's automatic also explains that some people, while perfectly adjusted to life in a modern environment, may not feel the need to articulate any inference. In that sense, while logic is essentially the job of our unconscious mind and unaffected by culture, formal logic, or anything like verbalised logic, is on the contrary subject to the habits and custom prevailing in your culture. This also explains why most people aren't very good at articulating logical arguments. Most of the time, we don't have to even think about it and inferring from what people say still requires that you should be familiar with the language used.
EB