THE LOGICAL FALLACY OF THE ARGUMENT FROM INTERMINABLE NUANCE

Interminable Nuance.

This really ought to become a class of Logical Fallacy. Maybe other readers can help me out on this. Here are my thoughts.

1) Gradations exist.

2) On an scale of gradients, it is hard to distinguish where one class ends and the next begins. (For instance, where does blue actually become purple on the gradient color line?)

3) Therefore, because it is difficult to scientifically establish the precise place where distinction occurs, on the line of gradients, there are no distinctions at all in the world, and knowledge is impossible.

This is the line of argument that the Postmodern Left Deconstructionists use in most of their "moral" arguments. It is a logical fallacy of some sort.

Please help me to classify it.

RELIAPUNDIT: HERE'S MY EXPLANATION/GUIDE TO THE PERPLEXED:

All genres are arbitrary collections/categories; they are useful heuristic devices which do not really exist except as tools; IOW: they have epistemological usefulness and not ontological being.

IOW: they are intellectual devices not real things.

ALSO: Zeno of Elea dealt with this, tangentially - in a way Zeno endorsed the view that gradation is infinite and therefore knowledge and movement illusory:

He said travel/transport/movement was an illusion:

• The Dichotomy: Motion is impossible since "that which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal." (Aristotle Physics VI:9, 239b10)

That is, suppose an object moves from point A to point B. To get to point B the object must first reach the midpoint B1 between points A and B. However before this can be done the object must reach the midpoint B2 between points A and B1. Likewise before it can do this, it must reach the midpoint B3 between points A and B2, and so on. Therefore the motion can never begin.

A-----B3-----B2-----------B1-------------------------B

IOW: Since to get to endpoint B from start-point A you first have to cross AB's midpoint d and to get to midpoint D you have to AD's midpoint E and so on ad infinitum you can never go from A to B.

The most famous retort/rejection of this was the following: "Then I guess St Sebastian died of fear."




















(Greco; Klimpt and Liberale.)


Of course motion is possible and real. Deciding where one color ends and another begins is no more IMPOSSIBLE than motion.

THE PARADOX IS PHONY - A RESULT OF COMMITTING WHAT ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD CALLED "THE FALLACY OF THE MISPLACED CONCRETENESS" - that is, ascribing to heuristic devices ontological reality. It's what I call "The is/as conflation"; it's conflating FIGURATIVE things (whose veracity is limited to a particular scope or perspective) with REAL/LITERAL things which are true. Color names are heuristic devices, and not real, what makes one blue blue-green and another turquoise and another sea foam is the usefulness of the definition, not its reality. Colors are real, but color names are heuristic devices. Just as midpoints are heuristic devices. When one ascribes reality to a heuristic devices one is committing a logical fallacy p and the paradoxes which follow are idiotic and sophomoric and useless.

As far as REAL gradients go: One might define one color as a certain % of pixels of a certain wavelength (color) and one may index/define additional colors by any % change you THINK IS USEFUL.

Saying there are no "real" ways to index a gradient is idiotic, and asinine - and ignorant of how gradients REALLY work. (Indexing gradients is part of what I do professionally.)

Pastorius, your excerpt contained the following: "... it is difficult to scientifically establish the precise place where distinction occurs, on the line of gradients, there are no distinctions at all..."

THIS IS A NON-SEQUITOR: There is nothing IMPOSSIBLE about defining where it is useful to begin one color grouping and to end it and to begin another. How well it is done depends on the skill & acuity and the person performing the task and to what end the task at hand is aimed.

The person who says it can't be done is a jerk.