What Capntastic said. Also what Reelya said.
So.... There are a couple different ways to prove things. There are empirical experiments. Talk to Capntastic about those because he's an empiricist.
I'm a rationalist. And never the two shall agree. Well, that's not true.
We can of course agree that perpetual motion has something to do with buttered bread strapped to the back of a cat. That is, however, a discussion for another time. Also Capntastic is plenty fun to talk to.
Thankfully, what is normally considered boring and unnecessary detail is my specialty!
Ok, so here's how this is gonna go:
I.) "Evidence," and "Facts"
II.) CRAC form for analytical decision making.
I.) "Evidence," and "Facts" Evidence is a thing that has a tendency to prove a fact or contributes to proving a fact. A case is a brick wall and each piece of evidence is a brick in that wall. One single thing, taken by itself might mean nothing, but when put together with others may infer some fact. Evidence may be of many types, including testimonial, written, recorded, audio, or visual or expert (which is often anecdotal as experts will give conflicting opinions). The word "opinion" is rarely used in law, except when an expert, such as a doctor, or a tire expert, or an accident reconstructionist, gives their opinion.
The reason the word and meaning behind, "opinion" is not used, is because it is understood that we often cannot know "facts" objectively, even of physical actions. The prosecution uses evidence to support its theory of the case to prove "facts" (what you would call opinions) and the defense does the same. Each side attempts to tear the other down.
I do not know and cannot know if someone committed a given crime, especially if there are no witnesses. The prosecution also cannot know, as they certainly weren't there either. Yet, the prosecution will say it's evidence proves "facts." These can't be objectively verified, but the facts can sometimes be inferred from certain evidence, which is very often circumstantial only. Often it is incredibly important just to establish that a defendant was at the crime scene and unfortunately the jury will often say that, "X happened there and he was {the only one} there so it must have been him," and convict.
At some point, it's just persuasion. Peppering statements with, "I say ______," "in my opinion," or "I believe that ____," is meaningless, empty and redundant. Of course you're saying it. Of course its your opinion otherwise you wouldn't be saying it (or you'd be saying it was someone else's opinion). Of course you believe ____ if you're saying it, because it's assumed you say what you believe (that you don't lie) unless stated otherwise. Persuasive people don't bother doing this and that's fine.
II.) CRAC form for analytical decision making. You are categorizing things as "fact" v. "opinion." That's not going to get anyone anywhere. There is nothing but fact in the world, it's just that we can't KNOW all of them. So, we have to use educated guesses on the ones we can't know.
It is a fact that either 1.) Mr. Gingrich was aware of where he was, or
2.) He was not aware of where he was. <--- One of these two things is true. We may not know exactly which one, but one of these is true. We can either spend our lives not knowing/caring, or we can infer which factual state is true based upon what we observe: the video and transcript in the article.
Conclusion: What you have inferred
Rule: The standard by which you inferred it
Analysis: The facts applied to the rule by which you reached your conclusion
Conclusion: restate the conclusion.
or the more detailed:
Conclusion
Rule
Analysis
Counterargument: Whereby you attempt to make a good faith effort to show the other side
Counter to Counter: Whereby you attempt to counter the other side preemptively.
Conclusion
_________________________________________________________________The argument and one product of the stuff that went into it:
[Conclusion] Mr. Gingrich was not professionally courteous and aware at a public speaking engagement.
[Rule] The (potential) President of the US should be professionally courteous and aware at all public speaking engagements and should act as such.
[Analysis] Mr. Gingrich appears to have nodded off on camera, said some completely unrelated comment about talking to the secretary of defense (who was not present at all), believed there was a panel with questions for him when there was none, asked said panel to question him, awkwardly paused silently for several seconds when he was supposed to give a prepared speech, and failed to give his prepared speech.
[Counterargument] Mr. Gingrich may have just harmlessly dozed off before the speech.
[Counter to counter] He still failed to give the speech he prepared and instead of giving a speech like he was supposed to, he asked a non existent panel to question him....
[Conclusion] Thus, Mr. Gingrich was not professionally courteous and aware at a public speaking engagement.
__________________________________________________________________There are some unspoken rules in there. Namely, that when you are supposed to give a speech in front of a large audience, you give it. You do not ask a non existent panel for questions instead of giving said prepared speech. You don't just put your face up on a giant screen in front of an audience like that without having something to say already written up.
In other words, even if I take what you say as true, that he was just
falling asleep BEFORE the speech,
it still effected his performance during the speech. Namely, he completely spaced and didn't give his prepared speech at all. He also got the format entirely wrong, you don't start a speech like that by asking questions, you save questions to the end. It wasn't a Q & A anyhow, it was a speech.
And again, as Capntastic has said, I'm not seeing a lot of evidence or argument to rebut what we've said or what we've pointed out. Honest question, does your argument amount to, "but we can't know for sure?"
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Topic: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread (Read 1290740 times)