A thread at UD that was just beginning to get interesting was unfortunately cut short when Elizabeth departed.
As is oh so typical over at UD, those silly IDiots were appealing to obvious truths and the primacy of logical reasoning. Elizabeth, in contrast, was championing her empirical methodology.
During the exchange, Elizabeth made the following statements:
My method is the standard empirical method.
If you can’t establish the truth of the premises how can you know your conclusion is correct, however impeccable the logic?
My question to Elizabeth was simple. How did you arrive at the truth of that statement [assuming it’s a rhetorical question] using the standard empirical method?
I’d really like to give Elizabeth an opportunity to answer.
For reference:
A deductive argument is said to be valid if and only if it takes a form that makes it impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion nevertheless to be false. Otherwise, a deductive argument is said to be invalid.
A deductive argument is sound if and only if it is both valid, and all of its premises are actually true. Otherwise, a deductive argument is unsound.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/val-snd/
Given the above explication of valid and invalid arguments and sound and unsound arguments, does Elizabeth’s question even make sense? IOW, logic does not and cannot tell us whether the conclusion is “correct.” Logic can only tell us whether an argument is valid. Logic cannot and does not tell us whether an argument is sound.
How do we discover these facts/truths of logic using Elizabeth’s standard empirical method? If they cannot be established as facts/truths using the standard empirical method, should logic be abandoned? If so, why?
If that physical entities adds only when God wants, when God wants and How Gods configured them yes are entities “configured”to add and reason.
Blas, are you trying to imply that immaterial mind interacts with physical body in exactly the same way that mass attracts other mass?Really? That’s what you think is a relevant question here?Why do you keep repeating this question?
No, my point is why we need to know how mind interact with matter if we do not know how gravity works and use it?
Hint if the answer of how matter attract matter is something like bending the space time my question would be how mass bends the space time,
Blas,
Okay, so if you agree that God could have configured us as purely physical entities able to add and reason, then why, specifically, do you reject the idea that we are purely physical?
What is the evidence that persuades you that we must possess immaterial minds/souls?
Blas,
You can keep asking “How?” questions forever in response to any explanation. By your logic, we can never favor one explanation over another, because we can always ask “How?” in response to both.
That’s goofy. Gravity’s explanation (general relativity) is much better than any purported explanation of how immaterial minds interact with the associated bodies.
Remind me again how empiricism gives us this “principle” of logic.
I ask again, if the principles of logic cannot be derived via “the standard empirical method” what good are they? Why don’t we just discard them as not conforming to our models of reality?
Let me try to put this another way that may hit a bit closer to home. Why be a “skeptic”?
Because the unskeptical people murder millions of women by denying them safe medical abortions on the grounds of some immaterial-mind/soul importance that can never be demonstrated to even exist, much less to be more important than the women’s already existing bodies. Because the unskeptics murder gay and trans men and women just for daring to exist in public, based on nothing more than unskeptical acceptance of “god-given logic”that there are only supposed to be two kinds of people. (Obvious! Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!)
Because the unskeptics murder each other day after day in country after country over disputes that are as objectively stupid as which friend or son-in-law was ordained by god to lead the troops in AD632. Sure, go ahead, you unskeptics, take those troops and battle each other until you’re all dead. But the problem is, innocent people keep getting swept up in those battles and in an age of long-distance weapons, innocents can be targeted halfway across the world.
It’s not as if the unskeptical are all just children who can be put in their playpens to have their tantrums without harming the rest of us.
Oh, you don’t think I should conflate “unskeptical” with stupidly “religious”? Too bad, that’s reality. Religion requires all adherents to adopt an unskeptical mindset in order to overlook the multiple contradictions between every religion’s scriptures and our mutual reality. There’s a reason that faith is the highest virtue of every religion. Faith, the belief in things unseen, things for which there can never be any evidence, things which if clearly defined would be seen as impossible not just unlikely or “miraculous”.
There’s a reason you’re reading and typing in this forum on a computer. And it’s not because of any god which you unskeptically believe in. It’s not because of WJM’s unevidenced mind-powers. It’s because the skeptics got down to the hard work of figuring out how materials and physical forces interact.
You could be proud to be a skeptic, Mung. You’ve already shown you’ve got the brains for it.
Perhaps the nicest thing anyone at TSZ has ever said to me. *hugs*
To me, this entire discussion (and others like it) boils down entirely on what the participants mean by those little bolded words (and their fellows “I”, “we”, “he”, “she”).
What are their referents?
Here is a quote from the wiki page on Skepticism:
That was the meaning I had in mind when I bought the domain name.
It’s funny how TSZ is often accused (over at UD) of not being skeptical enough. Because acceptance of evolution is widespread – if you accept it, how can you consider yourself skeptical? But the stance is more one of ‘show me’. If a claim is made, can you back it up? As far as evolution in general is concerned: yes, of course. But this does not mean that any evolutionary argument is accepted because it is an evolutionary argument. It’s accepted if there is evidential support – which of course does require the addition of reasoning ( a better word than ‘logic’, which I think WJM misuses). Peer review is skepticism in action. Huge rows break out over alternative evolutionary explanations.
But logic was not the prime mover. There’s all this data. All the species on earth fit more-or-less neatly into a nested hierarchic classification; more organisms are born than could survive; variations aid survival differentially; sampling distorts frequencies, etc. The application of ‘logic’/reason, for some, is to discover ways in which the whole thing can be presented as wrong, trivial or leading to Bad Consequences.
If you can add there are two possibilities God wired us as an adding machine or we have a mind. Which one are you going to choose?
Can you explain why is better the explanation of gravity than the explanation that mind interact with bodies?
Now that you have been given the opportunity to critically evaluate empiricism and rationalism side by side, what is your skeptical verdict? Which one is better? Is neither any good? How about skepticism itself?
I don’t buy the distinction. Empiricism involves lots of logic. I spend the half of my research life when I am not collecting data, figuring out, logically, what data I need to collect to test my logical hypothesis then devising logical programmes to analyse the data so it will tell me the answer.
In fact, it’s this very idea that “logic” is some standalone thing that will act as a touchstone to tell truth from falsehood that I am rejecting.
As I do the idea that “mind” is the same as “logic” (or whatever William means when he writes “mind/logic”). Or the idea that “logic” is solely “classical logic”. Empiricism often involves “fuzzy logic” because Nature turns out not to have totally clear joints at which to carve her, and empirical predictions about the future are probabilistic not definitive.
This is the common result in debates between empiricists and rationalists: The empiricist ends up denying rationalism, even when the denial involves direct denunciation of logic (which it must). To your credit, you do it unambiguously, loud and clear.
Yep, it’s all rational analysis. And therefore, by definition, it’s not empiricism.
Empiricism cannot live for a second without rationalism, whereas rationalism involves putting empiricism into perspective, demonstrating the limits of empiricism. Empiricism itself cannot analyse itself.
So you insist on equating reality with empirical perception with truth. This is irrational (because denial of logic directly implies inability to distinguish hallucinations from all other perception), but it’s okay. It’s the predictable outcome of empiricism gone beyond its limits.
The distinction of empiricism and rationalism is real. Empiricism cannot stand on its own. In order to count as human at all, the empiricist must admit at least to some level of rational analysis, which by itself is enough to undermine empiricism in principle. The debate is basically about what empiricists think as excesses of rationalism, but a coherent rationalist would be able to demonstrate that there are no such excesses, whereas empiricism itself is in constant need of moderation by rationalism.
Erik,
Empiricism! Rationalism!
A pox on both their houses.
The issue is that EL doesn’t consider the term “rational”, or the process of “reasoning”, to necessarily entail logic and to necessarily exclude logical fallacies. As she said before, what is “rational” can be based on “cultural norms”, or what most people around you think. She has said that if the culture around you accepts that a banana can tell you if your wife is cheating or not, then it could be a rational belief.
IOW, for EL, logic is not the foundation of rational thought, or correct thought, or correct reasoning. For her, it’s just one aspect of rational thought and reasoning. Other aspects are if others agree with you and if there is a cultural basis for your thoughts. She apparently draws an equivalence between logic and some things that are considered logical fallacies (appeal to authority, appeal to popularity) in her estimation of what are “rational” inferences and conclusions.
IOW, EL has already explicitly admitted to including what are almost universally regarded as logically fallacies (incorrect reasoning) for what she considers to be rational thought. In keith’s terminology, her calculator is improperly programmed.
Now, if EL is an improperly programmed “reasoning” calculator, how can she possibly fix herself? Especially if she doesn’t even think her programming is wrong in the first place!
Is she going to fix herself by changing her diet? Is she going to order a CT scan to locate the problem? Is she going to check cultural norms and authorities she respects to see if checking cultural norms and with authorities is an error of thinking?
Since she doesn’t hold logic as the arbiter of correct thought, what are we – those having discourse with her – to do? Well, there’s nothing we can do, because the only ethical tool we have at our disposal to help EL see the error in her thinking is that which she denies is the arbiter of her (and everyone’s) thinking: logic.
Erik,
I don’t think empiricism denies the role of reasoning. It holds that primary knowledge comes from sense-data. No empiricist (AFAIK) denies that sense-data demands rational analysis and organisation – particularly, its planned gathering in support of a particular hypothesis.
Sense data doesn’t give you knowledge. It gives you data. It is the interpretation, verification, sorting and application of that data towards hypothesis and theory to draw rational inferences and conclusions that results any coherent form of knowledge, even if one doesn’t know that is what they are doing.
Insofar as this is so, it warrants skepticism about the value of empiricism, but unfortunately EL’s otherwise exemplary skepticism falters here.
So, I guess we have narrowed down the conflict between empiricism and rationalism to a single point: If rationality/logic *alone* can be the source of knowledge. I think we already have enough examples in this thread that it indeed can. For example the logical puzzle posed by OMagain. There’s no empirical solution to it, but there is a logical solution.
And all the problems of empiricism also have their logical solutions. There’s always a logical solution to both empirical and logical problems, whereas there’s never an empirical solution to logical problems.
EL said:
How can you possibly use scientific data to to support or falsify a theory unless you can establish logical reasons why the data supports or falsifies the theory? It is the establishment of a logical reason that connects the data to the theory and frames it as either supportive or falsifying that “tells the truth” about the proposition. The data is **nothing** without the logic that attaches it and frames it according to the theory.
Without the logic, you might as well collect the chemical composition data of bananas and then say, “see, the chemical composition supports the theory that bananas can tell you if your spouse is cheating because it is culturally accepted and most experts agree! There’s no logical connection that has been established between the chemical composition and the proposition.
This is why there are established logical fallacies which are errors of reasoning. Without proper thinking, EL, a person can use any justification they want for anything they want and call it a sound, rational conclusion, and have no reason to try and correct their own thinking … correct it, according to what standard? Popularity? Authority?
I disagree.
If Erik were raised from birth in a warm, nonthreatening, risk-free environment, fed all the required nutrients by machine but receiving no sensory inputs, no stimulation or feed-back of any kind, what kind of rationalist would Erik be? Erik would have no context, no language, no concepts with which to reason. All we know of the world comes from our sensory inputs. As Allan Miller says, we can build logic and rationality on to that, but the empiricism has to come first.
And that’s correct. Logic is merely a tool.
No, it’s not okay to invent something neither implied nor stated. Or to make out the subject to be some philosophic deepity rather than what it is, the science that works.
Logic alone won’t tell us what are hallucinations and what aren’t, anyhow. It took empiricism to eventually discern that dreams and hallucinations weren’t “alternate realities.” This empiricism, of course, also utilized logic, rationalism. For most of us, this is nothing but a given.
No one here thought it did.
No, because it’s not metaphysics or philosophy. It’s what works. It relies on philosophy, in a way, by using logic, but it justifies itself by its own pragmatic standards.
Which no one here would deny. Maybe more importantly, even, logic and the rational are within the purview of science itself, since these are evolved abilities that have to develop in each individual, and which also fail in many instances in rather biologic ways (as in why do IDists suck at rationality?).
I’m all for philosophy, until it starts trying to dictate to people what their terms mean, even when it’s pretty clear that nothing of the sort was meant by their use of those terms. As in, empiricism is indeed used against a rationalism that intends to dictate what is without dealing intelligently with empiric issues, but this empiricism has never been anything but that of science, which loves its rationalism and logic.
Glen Davidson
AF said
You are conflating “experience” with “empiricism”. Empiricism is an invention of rational minds based on their experience. Whether or not that “experience” relates to an actual, external world is also a model generated by logic sorting and analyzing experience.
I would say that the first experience of any individual, sentient being, whether understood or articulated or not, is the very first principle of logic – identity: “I”-ness, while at the same time (or closely following): a distinction of “I” from “other”, and that the two are not the same thing. I’d go so far to say that sentient, individual experience itself is necessarily bound up in the validity of logical principles.
Well, sort of, but we don’t really build logic and rationality onto that, those more or less come first. We’re no tabulae rasae, sensory inputs themselves have to “mean something” (in a way) even before we’re viewing the world with our eyes, and to “mean something” at all requires a sort of rational order.
It’s a kind of Kantian “primacy of mind.” Indeed, the way that we even know the world comes first, must come first, indeed, although in any practical sense it’s also true that the sort of “absolute logic” that Plato and other rationalists take as the “highest order” is in fact something that depends upon development and learning. Yet the rudiments of rationality are basically inborn to us, and in that sense they do “come first.”
Of course, thinking beings tend to make “thinking” out to be the most important thing, when there are a whole lot of other factors of perception and judgment that are as “primary” as is any sort of rationality, such as the qualia. I could hardly say that logic is more “basic” than is red and blue (despite the fact that we purportedly aren’t born with color vision–we also don’t decide to, or decide how to, see color), but logical thinkers tend to think so, if not especially rationally.
Glen Davidson
Indeed, see little difference in the two concepts. Without any experience of the external world, I suspect a human mind will not develop to the extent it is able to rationalize.
Pedant’s note: the French for “experienced” is experimenté
GlenDavidson,
Your post is, unfortunately, a long example of someone who has assumed their philosophy as reality, denying it as philosophy, then using that philosophy to indict the limitations of philosophy. One example:
As if pragmatism is not a philosophy, and as if pragmatic standards can be established and compared without logic. Without logic, you could not make an argument for pragmatism nor justify its application; you could not establish a pragmatic standard (nor even determine what a “standard” was), and you could not logically compare outcomes for their practical value.
AF
Well, there’s part of your problem. Empiricism is a theory of knowledge. Experience is not a theory of knowledge. Empiricism was invented, as I said, via rational interpretation of experience. Logic precedes and generated Empiricism.
Your post is an example of someone illegitimately pigeonholing something in order to fit it into your preconceptions.
As if pragmatism is only philosophy, rather than a pre-existing, larger term/concept that was picked up by philosophers to refer to their own philosophies regarding praxis and its understanding.
Not even close to what I said, in fact the opposite of what I was claiming.
Yeah, quite like I said. I say, “x = a,” and William comes along and says that I got that all wrong, because, actually ,”x = a.”
Glen Davidson
This is almost true — almost, but not quite.
On the one hand, it’s true that all thought, whether empirical or formal, involves concepts. Empirical thought, in particular, involves the application of concepts to experience. To that extent there is an a priori dimension to empirical thought, since thought has a structure of its own that can be made explicit. On the other hand, analysis of formal structures alone cannot tell us which concepts to apply, or how best to revise a theory in light of new discoveries. The world does, after all, get a vote in what we say about it!
In other words, while reasoning is certainly necessary for resolving empirical problems, it is not sufficient; correct reasoning is necessary and also sufficient only for solving purely formal problems.
Moreover, as Elizabeth has been stressing, correct reasoning in empirical domains involves different techniques — probability theory, for example — than correct reasoning in formal domains. In formal domains of inquiry, we’re only interested in analyzing the structures themselves, e.g. what is validity? Is validity defined in terms of truth or truth in terms of validity? Does classical logic have anything in favor of itself besides the weight of tradition over non-classical logics?
That’s quite different from the iterative process of hypothesis formation, testing, and revision, which is the ideal of empirical science.
We can ask, what kinds of knowledge does logic alone give us? As I see it, logic is a set of techniques for making explicit different kinds of inferences. One of the core notions in the concept of inference is the concept of incompatibility. For example, one should not believe all of the following: p, ~q, and p –> q. Why not? Because they are incompatible! (If one thinks about it, one will see that the rule modus ponens and the rule modus tollens are both making explicit the same incompatibility.)
Because incompatibility is the central concept of inference, and we can define validity in terms of incompatibility, we can quickly see that logic alone can tell us what is impossible, and from the concept of impossibility, we can define necessity and possibility. Hence logic can tell us what must be the case, what might be the case, and what cannot be the case.
But — and this the important point — logic alone cannot tell us what really is the case. To know what is going in the actual world, and not just in all possible worlds (necessity), one of them (possibility), or none of them (impossibility), one needs experience. This is the key insight that rationalism missed and that empiricism understood, but empiricism fumbled its own insight by having a faulty theory of what concepts are and where they come from.
GlenDavidson,
It’s important here not to conflate intelligibility or meaningfulness as such with the distinctive kind of meaningfulness that comes about with norm-governed inference, which in turn is made explicit by logic.
For one thing, there is an orderliness to perception itself that is non-inferential or non-logical. As Alva Noe nicely puts it in Action in Perception:
But the sensorimotor bodily skills are not themselves discursive practices; my cats have a wide repertoire of sensorimotor skills, some of which they share with me, through which they know a lot about their environment, even though they cannot engage in rational dialogue. Since they are not able to engage in dialogue with others about their shared world, their knowledge is not genuinely objective (nor is their bodily awareness genuine self-awareness), but it is still a genuine kind of knowledge nevertheless.
The problem I’m interested in here is how to move past the opposition between empiricism and rationalism. I think that both are false. Empiricism is a bad theory of experience, and rationalism is a bad theory of inference. Instead, I want to take up the insights in the phenomenology of embodiment as a theory of experience and the insights in analytic pragmatism as a theory of inference. The trick is figuring out how to understand the relation between sensorimotor abilities and discursive practices.
It’s not that important to me, since I rather suspect that explicit logic/inference, etc., are more or less extensions of more basic unspoken meaningfulness and praxis.
Formally, of course, the distinction matters. Like, I shouldn’t have said it was a “Kantian ‘primacy of mind’,” even with the qualifying “kind of,” since Kant saw his “categories” far more formally than I did there. Still, it’s the way I’d go with logic and rationality, for we can’t dispense with these even if we wanted to, for they are a part of how we think and act, and, I’d argue, how any sentient animal thinks and acts.
Glen Davidson
You are just about the most respectable thinker on this site and your point is very well considered. However, I disagree anyway.
You are right in saying that formal structures alone cannot tell us how best to revise a theory in light of new discoveries. However, it’s logic alone that tells us that we even *should* revise theories in light of new discoveries. New discoveries don’t necessarily prompt us to update the theory. That which prompts us to update the theory is adherence to the idea that the theory should correspond to the relevant data – logic of correspondences.
Furthermore, it’s logic alone that tells us what kind of theories are viable at all, with or without data. This point is particularly forceful when the theory lacks any data. Given no data, the viability/utility/reasonableness of the theory is purely logical. Given data, the theory consists in logical organisation and interpretation of the data.
For example the theory that the mind is immaterial is purely logical. There’s no empirical data to support immaterial things (this is what immaterial means, duh), so the support for the theory rests completely on logic.
And even the theory that the mind is material is purely logical, because actually there’s no empirical support for the materiality of the mind either. The theory of the materiality of the mind is based on inductive generalisation (a *logical* technique, not empirical). Inductive generalisation can be fallacious, so it can be logically (not empirically) disputed and hence there are alternative theories that avoid the fallacy. Rationalists are fundamentally skeptical about induction. Empiricists are not, to their own peril.
All this emphasises the superiority of rationalism over empiricism.
KN said:
Good luck doing any of that non-rationally and then bringing that to the kind of debate we as humans expect: a rational one. Or you could do what what materialists did with free will – just redefine it – or what EL has done with rationality – just include “as rational” whatever logical fallacies you want to support your views.
That’s the problem with not holding logic as the a priori standard of correct thinking; once you veer into the non-rational, well, you’re free to “arbit your thought” any way you wish, and then you end up with people at the new Tower of Babel – where the words are the same, but all the “reasonings” are different.
There’s no ethical arguments available if we’re all entitled to our own brand of “reasoning”.
I also tend towards a less formalist and more pragmatic interpretation of the categories, following Royce’s dictum that “the categories are ways of acting.” In that approach, we can’t dispense with them — they are implicit in our thought and action. (Though this is not to say that classical logic is the only way of making explicit these implicit categories!)
But I am less sure that they are implicit in how any sentient animal thinks and acts, because I want to use “sentient” here to mean an animal’s ability to discriminate perceptually between motivationally salient stimuli and act in correspondingly appropriate ways. Though implicit practical inference plays an indispensable role in coordinating perceptual discrimination and purposive behavior, I would not call that logical inference.
One of the highlights of sapience, as distinct from sentience, is that we can keep track of each other’s inferential commitments and entitlements, can correct each other’s inferences, and revise our own inferences in light of how others correct us. Logic plays a useful role in making explicit the underlying structure of our shared norms of correct and incorrect inference. But non-rational animals don’t have shared norms, since (if Tomasello is right) they don’t have shared intentionality.
William J. Murray,
Except that my goal isn’t to reject the role of reasoning in human life, but to dispute that rationalism is the correct theory of what reasoning is (just as I am to dispute that empiricism is the correct theory of what experience is).
No, it doesn’t, because the idea that there is a world “out there” is a concept that itself had to be “voted in”. The concept that there is a world “out there” at all is a logical construct. Self/other – meet principle of identity, “A” and “not-A”, “self” and “not-self”. The idea that sensory data is coming from an external world is a logical construct of experience represented entirely by and in our mind, whether it is based on data coming from an outside world or not.
All the experience tells you is that you are experiencing something – for all you know, it is yourself that you are experiencing and nothing else. This possibility is made manifest by what we experience when we dream. Everything you experience could be a delusion, or a hallucination, or in more scientific terms, you could be a Boltzmann Brain dreaming all this up.
Your representations of your argument conflate “experience” with “sensory data coming from an external world”, a reification of what is nothing more than a rational model based upon experience. Our experience indeed gets a vote – not “the world”. Unfortunately for empiricists, “our experience” still takes place entirely within the mind. We just believe it represents an actual, external world due to a rational examination of that experience.
KN said:
First, empiricsim isn’t a theory “of what experience is”, it is a theory of how knowledge is gained. You cannot gain knowledge from experience, you can only gain knowledge from experience by logically sorting it out. You can only claim that empiricism precedes logic by assuming as real some of the logical sorting of experience (that it represents consistent sensory data from and matched to an external world) on an a priori basis. Again, even then, logic pre-empts and trumps empiricism – logic creates empiricism, and the only way you have of including some non-rational means of reasoning is if you can logically support it in the first place, which appears to me would be a self-contradiction. If you can logically support it, it’s hardly non-rational.
Second, if you do not dispute that rationalism is the correct theory of what reasoning is via a rational argument, how can you have ethical discourse? Are you going to argue for your point non-rationally?
A quick note: when I hear “empiricism”, I think of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Mach, in which case it is of a theory of what experience is; likewise, when I hear “rationalism”, I think of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Frege, in which case it is a theory of what reasoning is. In my idiom, one can talk about “empirical knowledge” without being an “empiricist”, and one can talk about “rational inference” without being a “rationalist.”
William J. Murray,
Except that I don’t think that experience is representational at all. More on that later!
Here I happen to agree, but there’s more. When “empirical knowedge” and “rational inference” are compared and analysed, they are found to be different tools fit for different jobs, not interchangeable and not categorically on a par as epistemic tools.
Even more, in agreement with Liddle, the “standard empirical method” of science exists but, contra Liddle, it’s not the only method of science. Empirical sciences are just a subset of sciences and (it can rationally be argued) they are not the most fundamental kind of sciences.
Empiricism and rationalism coexist, but they are different tools with different applicability. The differences are discovered by rational analysis, not by empirical experience, and this fact is an indication that rationalism has more depth.
William J. Murray,
People with different rationales, you say? What a terrible thought; thank Heaven the world isn’t really like that …
Allan said:
Are there no faulty rationalizations then, Allan? If everyone is entitled to their own brand of rational thought, then anything can be said to be rational, right? It’s as subjective as morality under matieralism – rationality reduced to whatever you happen to feel is rational. And so the fundies that drive their planes into buildings are every bit as rational as you or I.
Everyone’s entitled to their own opinions. The facts are something you can check.
Without proper reasoning, how would you go about checking a fact, or separating opinion from fact?
Why can’t I use reasoning?
That people have different rationales (and different moralities) is a fact of life. The rules of logic are nonetheless pretty well agreed and sound – I am not suggesting they are subjective in the ‘free-for-all’ sense that you seem to use the term. But there are many bogus arguments, often entirely in accord with the rules of logic – just wrong. One can see a bogus argument when one sees it. But clearly, its proponent cannot, assuming good faith. So universal standards do not appear to apply here either.