Bush’s Paradox

Way too much work here to interpret a statement whose meaning, in context, was obvious, and not at all a contradiction. Bush (rhetorical wizard that he is not) got tangled up using “needed” in two different ways. His first use of it meant something like “was unavoidable” — in response to Williams’ question about the war being elective — while the second meant “was demanded by the situation” (as in, was the right thing to do in response to the situation). So:

“Whether or not war could have been avoided, I’m still convinced the situation demanded it.”

“Whether or not it needed to happen, I’m still convinced it needed to happen.”

Safe. Contentless. Strong. Epistemology is not the point. Evoking recognizeable images with the proper associations is the objective. It works.

he is conversationally implicating that facts about P are irrelevant to/do not determine his beliefs about P. An epistemic bubble, yes, but not a logical contradiction.

It’s called making a sale. (OK, I didn’t say it was a very good example of salesmanship) The content need not have anything to do with anything, so long as it is pursuasive enough to get the mark to turn over his money. After that critical point, it doesn’t much matter what happens.

The total lack of a case for war, perplexing to many, was beside the point. Were the things that were said under the pretext of making a case for war the kind of things that looked plausible to the target audience? Were they, for instance, the kinds of things you would expect to see in a movie where an actual case for war was being made? Yes? Then that’s enough.

It was not necessary even to achieve majority support for the invasion (majority support that only appeared when the shooting started) so long as there was the appearance of a consensus on Tee Vee.

The epistemology of Untelligent Design is much the same. There’s no sense in evaluating the argument, because there isn’t one. The objective is to create the appearance of a controversy. The appearance alone is useful, no matter how wrong you are or how little support you have.
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I think that would have been great if Rumsfeld could have done the backup vocals.

It means: being stubborn, unreasonable, bullheaded.

No, it doesn’t. But it does entail making the kind of noises your media people have told you will be effective, hence the nonsense. It’s not that words don’t matter, not entirely. But you must sprinkle your argle-bargle with occasional words likely to come out of the type you are playing, in this case the hero.

“Bold” was the word today, for instance.

Just think of it as Cocteau Twins with a body-count.
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I you add “in bed” to the end, it’s more sensible.

Looking at context, I think Bush is using two different sense of ‘needed’. He says that the war didn’t need to happen because, after all, if he hadn’t given the order it wouldn’t have happened. So it wasn’t metaphysically or nomologically necessary. But then he’s saying that he thinks the war needed to happen in the sense that he was obliged to go to war — that’s moral necessity, or necessity with respect to whatever goal it is that he thought he was trying to accomplish. (I confess that the interview does not help me figure that out. WMD terrorists blah blah blah, I guess).

As for the paradoxicality of the statement if you don’t see it as involving two senses of “need,” think of it this way:

First of all, the “I believe” operator is raised (or is this lowered?). If I say, “If Cheney resigns, I believe that Rice will be the new Vice President,” then I believe the following conditional: If Cheney resigns, then Rice will be the new VP. But I may not believe that Rice will be the new VP, because I do not think that Cheney will resign.

Indeed, suppose that Cheney does resign. If my original statement were the conditional “If A, then I believe B,” then it would be proper to say, “Well, A happened, but in fact you didn’t believe B, so your wrong.” But this would be absurd. Clearly what I said should be interpreted as “I believe: If A then B.”

Now we’ve turned Bush’s statement into: “I believe: If P or not-P, then P.” Now “If A or B then C” is equivalent to “If A then C, and if B then C.” (In two-valued logic. Other logics make this messier, but I think this works now.”) So a statement of the form “If P or not-P then P” turns into “If P then P, and if not-P then P.” And the second conditional is absurd (well, in two-valued logic it’s equivalent to P, but never mind that), so it would be absurd to assert belief in it.

So “Whether P or not-P, I believe that P” ultimately amounts to asserting, in part “I believe that if not-P then P,” and that’s an absurd thing to believe.

He says that the war didn’t need to happen because, after all, if he hadn’t given the order it wouldn’t have happened.

Um, why, then, “whether or not it needed to happen”? If you’re correct, then should’ve been simply: it didn’t need to happen but it needed to happen.

A. “Whether or not P, I believe P” has the same truth-conditions as “I believe P”

B. “Whether or not P, I believe P” == “The truth-value of P is of no interest to me”

A is true. B is not true.

Suppose P is the Goldbach conjecture. Assuming (despite my nom de net) that the Goldbach conjecture has a truth value, no one knows what it is. But I can still believe it, even though I know it may be false. So A is nothing like Moore’s paradox.

Of course if the truth value of Goldbach’s conjecture is ever established, I can revise my belief accordingly. In fact my belief in Goldbach’s conjecture might stimulate me to attempt to prove it myself à la Wiles/Fermat. So the LHS of B does not imply the RHS, and the equivalance fails.

Isn’t it a bit unfair to apply so much logical analysis when English is plainly not Bush’s first language? There must be some sort of family tradition to use a lost or invented language when the kids are growing up.

oops, I meant:
Whether or not the Bush family is brought up speaking the ancient and noble dialect of the Illuminati elders, I believe they are brought up speaking pig latin.

whether or not I had to give the order, the war had to happen

On my reading, you’ve still got two different senses of the word “had to” there. I’m thinking of something like this–suppose a friend who had recently done me a big favor asks me to pick him up at the airport. I say yes. “Did you have to say yes?” someone asks me. I say, “Well, I didn’t have to in that no one was making me; but I had to in that it would have been really ungrateful of me not to.” Bush’s thought process may be something like that.

But really, I’m just here for the nitpicky linguistic analysis.

it seems to me Bush was using the kind of verbal shorthand all of us use conversationally. The first part of his statement, “Whether or not it needed to happen,” means that Bush is indicating an unknowable factual proposition; i.e we can’t know absolutely what the necessary course of action is, therefore I (Bush) have acted on my best sense of things– even though he places the second part of the statement in the passive voice–“I’m still convinced it needed to happen.” At least the man is consistent about these sorts of things. This is really a restatement of his oft repeated view that he is not going to second guess himself.

Whether ’tis better to be inarticulate like Bush, or a fluent liar like Blair…

So, Matt, you’re reducing the first clause to trivial “nobody held a gun to my head” and the whole thing becomes: “I felt then and still do that it needed to be done”. But the construct “whether or not” works against your theory; you don’t say: “whether or not I had to pick him up at the airport, it needed to be done”, you simply say: “I didn’t have to, but I felt I ought to”.

The “whether or not” seems to indicate that destiny might’ve played a role here. Explain the “whether or not”, please, since that’s what you’re here for.

No paradox. Performative epistemics.

A lot of time and thought on something that may or may not warrant it.

Bush prefers to use a very colloquial English for his speeches, and he’s not very good at thinking on his feet, or at least giving us the product of that thought in English.

This kind of confusion is the reason that presidents and others who must (not “need to”) make their meaning clear have used very prepared, very constructed scripts.

Bush presumably uses scripts, but his preference for what he thinks in the language of the common man and probably muddy thinking as well (by him? by his speechwriters?) lead to nonsense.

I think that those interpreting this statement generously (by which I mean those making it make sense by e.g. reading “need” in two ways) are missing the emphasis, which should be on the second part (“I’m still convinced”) not the first part (“whether or not”). In a great many situations, Bush has shown himself to use faith-based reasoning: believing something is sufficient evidence that it’s true, or is sufficient that its truth is irrelevant (which it is varies, and can vary, since it’s not the point). Further, Bush clearly believes (and in this case with good reason, I fear) that this sort of logic is convincing to much of the country. This statement is a reassertion of faith: he is still a believer, and anything that his opponents bring up, facts or whatnot, is irrelevant to that. He is, as the Medium Lobster might put it, showing resolve — all that matters in this view.

Maybe there is some sort of Straussian flim-flammery going on, akin to ‘whether or not Jesus is god, I profess Jesus is God’

‘Whether or not the public reasons for war hold up, the private reasoning still stands’

In another instance: ‘Whether or not Delay is guilty, my legislative programme requires him to be innocent’