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David Kellogg Negatively Judging ChRIS CLÉiRIGh Without Cause

David Kellogg replied to ChRIS CLÉiRIGh on sys-func on 10 Apr 2024, at 08:25:

Well, Chris, I very much doubt if you are sufficiently familiar with the quality of my own work to pass any judgement on its theoretical consistency.

and again on 10 Apr 2024, 16:12:

You certainly did not pass any judgement on the theoretical consistency of my work: you would need a phenomenal mastery of the Korean language to do that. Precisely for that reason your remark "You can analyse it anyway you want to if don't care about theoretical consistency or the quality of your own work" was as impertinent as it was ungrammatical.

and again on 12 Apr 2024, at 9:04:

What really happened was that I asked a question about clause complexing. … Then I got a bunch of ungrammatical gobbledygook about the quality of my work in reply.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, Kellogg had asked :

But why can't I consider the clause She tore up the letter, which upset me to be a Circumstance of "She tore up" or some way of complexing the verbal group in the main clause? Why do I have to consider it a ranking clause in its own right?

and CLÉiRIGh had replied:

You can analyse it anyway you want to if [you] don't care about theoretical consistency or the quality of your own work.

That is, CLÉiRIGh had simply stated that it is the desire to maintain the quality of one's work that restricts one's analyses to those that are valid in terms of the theory. The assumption was that Kellogg would desire to maintain the quality of his work. CLÉiRIGh made no reference whatsoever to the quality of Kellogg's actual work.

With respect to Kellogg judging his senior as "impertinent", see 

• David Kellogg Falsely Judging ChRIS CLÉiRIGh As Cowardly.

The rhetorical effect of this self-contradicting judgement was to distract attention away from Kellogg's confused and shifting argumentation about how best to analyse non-defining relative clauses. For the confusions and inconsistencies in Kellogg's argumentation, see

• David Kellogg On Non-Defining Relative Clauses.

David Rose Likening A Cancer Survivor Disfigured By Life-Saving Treatment To The Elephant Man

After Rob Spence described his facial disfigurement resulting from life-saving cancer treatment on asflanet on 24 Mar at 9:20:

But the parson's nose image itself was prompted by seeing my own nose on Friday, just two weeks after its reconstruction following four unsuccessful attempts to remove a basal cell carcinoma plus one final, successful, but radical attempt. I currently have part of my forehead attached to the side of my nose — and it literally looks like nothing more than the rear end of a stuffed chook.

David Rose replied on asflanet at 10:01:

I hope you’re following Joseph Merrick’s lead to put your head in a bag.

Blogger Comments:

David Kellogg Characterising What ChRIS CLÉiRIGh Was Doing As Cowardly

David Kellogg wrote to ChRIS CLÉiRIGh on sys-func on 8 Mar 2024, 08:40:

Here are two arguments against posting "informal logical fallacies" instead of actual linguistic (theoretical and practical) work on our list. See which you find more convincing.

a) The posting of informal logical fallacies facilitates petty one-up-manship; it's something people (overwhelmingly white men) do instead of real research, because it yields smugness and self-satisfaction without responsibility — and without results. (It is also cowardly because, as we saw with your very first example, it means you can insinuate and hint at names instead of engaging flesh-and-blood thinkers and their actual arguments!)

b) Informal logic, like formal logic, is simply one form of logic. But logic is, by its very nature, an abstraction based on millennia of historical generalisation. Logic always requires some kind of mediating system of concepts — always domain specific — before it can be applied. This is why one kind of logic obtains in arithmetic (where differences are always significant) and a different kind in statistics (where differences can be insignificant). This is why we have one kind of logic in the human sciences (where societies that look after the old, the poor, and the sick are considered more evolved) and a different kind in biology (where the survival of the infirm tends to devolution and extinction). As Vygotsky said, a "Marxist psychology" would be as sterile as a Marxist mineralogy:

(Personally, I find BOTH of them convincing; I suppose that means I am either tone-deaf or tone-unpoliced....)

and to Sys-Func on 9 Mar 2024, at 08:19:

Notice that ALL of the responses to my initial response to Chris's "tone policing fallacy" have been responses to a). That was the argument which included words like "one-up-manship", "smug", "self-satisfaction", "cowardly" to characterise what Chris was doing. …

Blogger Comments:

[1] An argument for posting types of informal fallacies to the sys-func list is that it may help scholars to identify fallacious arguments, and to thwart the bullies who use them. 

[2] To be clear, in presuming that either of the alternative arguments is "convincing", this is an example of the false binary fallacy:

A false dilemma, also referred to as false dichotomy or false binary, is an informal fallacy based on a premise that erroneously limits what options are available. The source of the fallacy lies not in an invalid form of inference but in a false premise. This premise has the form of a disjunctive claim: it asserts that one among a number of alternatives must be true. This disjunction is problematic because it oversimplifies the choice by excluding viable alternatives, presenting the viewer with only two absolute choices when in fact, there could be many.

[3] To be clear, these are examples of the argumentum ad hominem fallacy:

Ad hominem (Latin for 'to the person'), short for argumentum ad hominem, refers to several types of arguments, which are fallacious. Typically this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.

[4] This is the exact opposite of what is true, since it is not possible to identify the fallacies in an argument without engaging with the actual argument in order to determine its validity.

[5] To be clear, this mistakes different fields in which logic is applied for different types of logic. Logic is reasoning conducted or assessed according to strict principles of validity, wherever it is applied. The examples provided for the human sciences and biology are not different types of logic. The former is a value judgement of types of societies, and the latter is a self-contradictory misunderstanding of evolution which posits that survival leads to extinction.

[6] This misunderstands the fallacy of tone policing – which is arguing by

focusing on emotion behind (or resulting from) a message rather than the message itself as a discrediting tactic.

Yaegan Doran Falsely Accusing ChRIS CLÉiRIGh Of Impropriety

Yaegan Doran wrote to ChRIS CLÉiRIGh on 23 Feb 2024, at 12:55:

I understand that you disagree with David’s characterisation, and that is fine. Can I request though that when discussing it in asflanet you avoid sarcasm or ridicule such as this?

We have had multiple people get in contact who have said they are not comfortable participating in the forum specifically because of a small set of people such as you, who at times writes in a way that people read as condescending, dismissive or ridiculing.

I am writing this privately so as to avoid calling you out publicly, but I do request that you tone your messages down in this regard.

Blogger Comments:

This is not the first time Doran has attempted to bully CLÉiRIGh with a false accusation; see:

Yaegan Doran Falsely Accusing The Sys-Func Moderator Of Racism

[1] Here Doran grants CLÉiRIGh permission to disagree with Rose. But see also 

The Promotion Of Anti-Intellectualism In The SFL Community

But in this case, contrā Doran's claim, CLÉiRIGh wasn't disagreeing with Rose, and Rose wasn't presenting a characterisation. Rose had written:

Perhaps we need to consider theories in relation to the communities that affiliate around them.

[2] This is misleading, because it is untrue. CLÉiRIGh was not using sarcasm or ridicule; he seriously meant what he said:

Yes, good idea. Let's consider Creation Science and Natural Selection in relation to the communities that affiliate around them. It may not tell us much about the theories, but it will tell us a lot about the communities.

The reason CLÉiRIGh judged Rose's suggestion to consider theories in relation to the communities that affiliate around them to be a good idea is that it would bring to light what is regarded as evidence for (or against) a theory in different communities.  See also David Rose On Theories, Communities And Academic Fields.

[3] This is misleading, because it is untrue. In the SFL email discussion lists, the proportion of subscribers who participate in theoretical discussions is typically less than 1%. Here Doran merely repeats the previous bare assertion of his community colleague Dreyfus (recorded here).

[4] This is misleading, because it is untrue. CLÉiRIGh posts to the asflanet list only extremely rarely, and many of its subscribers would not know anything about him. 

[5] To be clear, Doran provides no evidence that any of CLÉiRIGh's few posts were condescending, dismissive or ridiculing. Again, here is part of a post in which CLÉiRIGh helped a list member to understand a theoretical point, for which he thanked him muchly off-list:

But my main reason for commenting is just to say how great it is to see someone reasoning grammatically. More power to you.

Moreover, if Doran were really serious about policing the tone of posts on asflanet, he would instead target David Rose, but Doran and Rose are, in Bernstein's terms, both priests of the same prophet, Martin. For just one example of Rose's behaviour on email lists, see the post here.

[6] To be clear, Doran is a junior academic, half CLÉiRIGh's age. His inappropriate tenor of superior social status can be explained by the Dunning–Kruger effect:

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realise it. The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than in actuality; by contrast, the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to a perverse result where less competent people will rate their own ability higher than more competent people.

∞

Tone policing – focusing on emotion behind (or resulting from) a message rather than the message itself as a discrediting tactic.

David Rose Positively Judging And Appreciating Brad Smith

David Rose wrote to asflanet on 15 Feb 2024, at 12:42:

Brad, your generosity, skill and humility are the soul of this community.

thanks

Blogger Comments:

Rose used to openly boast, with glee, that he could turn people into 'pussycats' by flattering them.

Shooshi Dreyfus Falsely Accusing ChRIS CLÉiRIGh Of Impropriety

Shoshana Dreyfus wrote to asflanet on 9 Feb 2024, at 10:33:

Dear Kieran and Chris,

One of the reasons a wide range of people in the SFL community don’t post to this discussion list is because of the public chastising that seems to happen sometimes when one does post.

Perhaps if that could be toned down, or left out entirely, then people might feel more encouraged to join the conversation.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, this is pure invention on Dreyfus' part. Firstly, the number of people willing to publicly discuss matters of theory or analysis on email discussion lists is typically about 1% of the total number of subscribers, and these usually being the same very small set of people, and this does not vary with CLÉiRIGh's extremely rare participation on lists other than Sys-func.

Secondly, of the two posts sent, the first expressed admiration for an insightful post that everyone else was ignoring, and the second provided assistance to the list members by quoting Halliday on the adverbial group. They are repeated below.

(1)

Colm,

I can see where you're coming from, because, in terms of meaning, the vast cloud of gas and dust did turn into the Earth, under the influence of gravity, 4,600 million years ago, and so the relation is one of identity, from that perspective. It's just that here it is worded as a material clause (e.g. unmarked present tense) with a circumstance of Manner: means.

But my main reason for commenting is just to say how great it is to see someone reasoning grammatically.

More power to you.

Sláinte,

ChRIS

(2)

Dear Scholars,

The following might be helpful to anyone who has difficulty in distinguishing nominal groups from adverbial groups.

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 419-22):

The adverbial group has an adverb as Head, which may or may not be accompanied by modifying elements. … Premodifiers are grammatical items like not and rather and so; there is no lexical premodification in the adverbial group. … The items serving as Premodifiers are adverbs belonging to one of three types – polarity (not), comparison (more, less; as, so) and intensification. … Postmodification is of one type only, namely comparison.

ChEeRS,

ChRIS

∞

Tone policing – focusing on emotion behind (or resulting from) a message rather than the message itself as a discrediting tactic.