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"Fifty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong"

Angel

Angel

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The thread title "Fifty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong" is a cultural reference that goes back a hundred years.

Sophie Tucker is another cultural reference that goes back a hundred years.

Anyway, here she is singing the once-famous song:



I hope you enjoyed that.

For that was my way of introducing my theme or thesis.

Namely:

"5.8 Billion Believers Can't Be Wrong"
The Global Religious Landscape | Pew Research Center

This proposition is made out to be a fallacy, but I think the fallacy lies in the attribution of fallacy to this proposition.

I propose to meditate on this question here in the DP Chapel

I invite believer and non-believer alike to join in the meditation.

Why Can't 5.8 Billion Believers Be Wrong?


Namaste​
 
Those 5.8 Billion people believe a vast range of different and often directly contradictory things. They can’t all be right at the same time.
 
HonestJoe said:
Those 5.8 Billion people believe a vast range of different and often directly contradictory things. They can’t all be right at the same time.
Click to expand...
Glad you brought that up right off the bat, HJ. To rid ourselves of that canard will greatly facilitate our meditations.

So, the differences you point to are differences in the sacred stories or doctrines accepted concerning the nature of Transcendent Spiritual Reality. Belief in a Transcendent Spiritual Reality is the belief I'm interested in, and this TSR, whatever its nature is conceived to be, is the common denominator if you will or baseline belief of the 5.8 billion.

In simple terms, they all believe in something more or something bigger than the physical world in which their physical lives take place.


Namaste
 
Meditation the First

We should note that the proposition is about "believers," not about "people."

The proposition asserts nothing about the 5.8 billions except insofar as they are "believers."

So the proposition is not about a sampling of a population; it is about an entire population. The population of believers.

If 8 out of 10 people in the world are believers, our proposition is not about the 8/10; our proposition is about the 8/8.


This is made clearer perhaps by looking at the OP song title as a heuristic analogy.

The song is not about a percentage of the world population.

The song is about the French population.

The song is about the "Fifty Million Frenchmen"

Our proposition is about the "5.8 Billion Believers."

We should note this first.


Namaste​
 
Angel said:
In simple terms, they all believe in something more or something bigger than the physical world in which their physical lives take place.
Click to expand...
That strikes me as being far too generic to have any practical meaning and I'm not convinced it's consistent with the actual (rather than claimed) beliefs of every single "religious" person in the entire world, let alone all the ones who have lived throughout history.
 
Honest Joe's Demurrer​

HonestJoe said:
That strikes me as being far too generic to have any practical meaning and I'm not convinced it's consistent with the actual (rather than claimed) beliefs of every single "religious" person in the entire world, let alone all the ones who have lived throughout history.
Click to expand...

Your points -- too generic and inconsistent with actuality -- are well taken, HJ. This is why I've highlighted your post with a heading. I take your points as hovering over these meditations, and I plan to address them, but not at the moment. My chief interest in pursuing these meditations is to see whether the "Can't Be Wrong" part of the thesis can be justified. What I'm going to do, in light of your demurrer, is to call the generic view an assumption, and later see whether I can justify that assumption. If I can justify the "Can't Be Wrong" assertion using that assumption, then I'll attempt to justify the assumption as well. The justification of the assumption will involve the concepts of mythos and logos and will require a subtle argument. But if I cannot justify the thesis using the assumption, then I will not be obliged to make the argument for the assumption since my thesis will have failed.
 
Meditation the Second

Like that archival pop tune on which it is based, the proposition on which we meditate here, relies on an elliptical semantics.

What exactly is it that 50 Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong about?

What exactly is it that 5.8 Billion Believers Can't Be Wrong about?

In the case of the song, as the lyrics of the song imply, the answer is love, or sexual matters, "l'amour toujours."

In the case of our proposition about believers, it is what?

And when we say "Can't Be Wrong" what do we mean? In the song? In our proposition about believers?

These are the questions for today's meditation.


Namaste​
 
Angel said:
In simple terms, they all believe in something more or something bigger than the physical world in which their physical lives take place.
Click to expand...

My goodness! That's a very minor point of confluence indeed. Any rational response to such a statement should be: "yeah, so what?" I'd say about the same number of people who believe that the physical world is not all that exists also believe that the Earth is flat. So what? Not believing in an absolutist materialist position does not imply belief in anything else, not in higher powers, creationism or any other theistic or deistic concepts.

And finally, 50 million Frenchmen could be wrong, except that there are not, nor ever have been 50 million Frenchmen.
 
Is it 50 Million or 50 Billion, both are quoted in the OP, there is a huge difference.....
 
Size isn't everything. We don't respect the opinion of a fat man any more than a thin one.
 
Andalublue said:
My goodness! That's a very minor point of confluence indeed. Any rational response to such a statement should be: "yeah, so what?" I'd say about the same number of people who believe that the physical world is not all that exists also believe that the Earth is flat. So what? Not believing in an absolutist materialist position does not imply belief in anything else, not in higher powers, creationism or any other theistic or deistic concepts.

And finally, 50 million Frenchmen could be wrong, except that there are not, nor ever have been 50 million Frenchmen.
Click to expand...

Your post raises two timely questions insofar as they relate to the semantics of the OP.

In the case of the lighthearted song from the 1920s there can be no question but that semantics follows rhetoric -- a commonplace facon de parler, hyperbole, and a nod and a wink that is a kind of irony, Of course there weren't 50 million Frenchmen then (or now), and of course 50 million Frenchmen could be wrong, the numbers having little or nothing to do with truth or morality,

The meaning of the song, French enlightenment in matters of sex, is carried by the rhetorical nature of the lyrics. In fact the meaning of the song preceded the song. The song relies on popular notions of French culture for its effect.

Does the OP proposition -- "5.8 Billion Believers Can't Be Wrong" -- rely as well on rhetorical means in its semantics? That is a question raised by your post.

The rhetorical "Yeah, so what?" in response to "a very minor point of confluence" may be the key in answering this question. Is this "very minor point of confluence," like the popular notion of French enlightenment about sex in the case of the song, the cultural matrix of the semantic import in the case of the OP proposition?
And this, whatever shape the earth is thought to have in the minds of believers? In other words, even if "a minor point of confluence," how does the shared belief in a Transcendental Spiritual Reality (TSR), supposing it to be doing the work in this proposition that the popular notion of French enlightenment about sex does in the case of the 1927 song, relate to the "Can't Be Wrong" portion of the proposition, which is the selfsame rhetorical expression used in the song?

Why Can't 5.8 Billion Believers Be wrong in either a figurative or a literal sense?
 
Casper said:
Is it 50 Million or 50 Billion, both are quoted in the OP, there is a huge difference.....
Click to expand...
It is 50 million as regards the song; 5.8 billion as regards the OP proposition about believers.
 
Angel said:
Why Can't 5.8 Billion Believers Be wrong in either a figurative or a literal sense?
Click to expand...

They can be. I'm sure there must be a pretty large number of people who believe Tom Cruise is a good actor. They can certainly be wrong.
 
Andalublue said:
They can be. I'm sure there must be a pretty large number of people who believe Tom Cruise is a good actor. They can certainly be wrong.
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To be sure. "They can be." I regret that I wasn't clear about this -- re-reading my post at #11, I see that I wasn't as clear as I thought I was.

Nevertheless, though the "large number of people who believe Tom Cruise is a good actor...can certainly be wrong," in a literal sense, it is my intuition (at this stage nothing more) that a statement in the form "200 million Tom Cruise fans can't be wrong" may yet affirm something that in a figurative sense is also correct.

That was what I was trying to say in #11. The meditations in this thread are aimed at exploring the possible figurative truth of the OP proposition about believers.
 
Andalublue said:
They can be. I'm sure there must be a pretty large number of people who believe Tom Cruise is a good actor. They can certainly be wrong.
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An afterthought too late to include in my reply above.

"An X number of Y can't be wrong" is a phrasal template, like the one used in "The king is dead, long live the king!" It is figurative in nature.
 
Meditation the Third

First, I would express appreciation to HonestJoe and Andalublue whose objections forced a greater clarity on these meditations.

So today I consider what sort of truth may reside in the phrasal template "X number of Y can't be wrong."

Since on a literal reading X does not affect the truth of the proposition, and on a literal reading Y can certainly always be wrong, what sort of truth remains?

Can a figurative reading command a certain truth, as in that other phrasal template "The king is dead, long live the king"?

How can even X=1 insure that Y can't be wrong in a figurative sense?

What sense does the figurative sense convey in any case? In this case?


Namaste​
 
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Meditation the Fourth

We consider the phrasal template X number of Y can't be wrong, and we borrow a case drawn from Andalublue's counterexample:

"200 million Tom Cruise fans can't be wrong."

Now, as has been conceded, whether X=200 million or X=1 makes no difference to the truth of the proposition.

Also conceded is the fact that Tom Cruise fans can be wrong.

But does it follow from the fact that Tom Cruise fans can be wrong that they can't be right?

And does it follow from the fact that they can be right that they can't be wrong?

The answer to both questions seems clearly to be No.

But if Tom Cruise fans can be right and Tom Cruise fans can be wrong, in what sense can't they be right?

And if Tom Cruise fans can be right and Tom Cruise fans can be wrong, in what sense can't they be wrong?

Are there any such senses?


Namaste​
 
Andalublue said:
My goodness! That's a very minor point of confluence indeed. Any rational response to such a statement should be: "yeah, so what?" I'd say about the same number of people who believe that the physical world is not all that exists also believe that the Earth is flat. So what? Not believing in an absolutist materialist position does not imply belief in anything else, not in higher powers, creationism or any other theistic or deistic concepts.

And finally, 50 million Frenchmen could be wrong, except that there are not, nor ever have been 50 million Frenchmen.
Click to expand...

As of 1 January 2018, the population of France was estimated to be 65,129,694 people. This is an increase of 0.45 % (291,771 people) compared to population of 64,837,923 the year before.

Of course, only half are men.
 
Meditation the Fifth

Is there anything about which 200 million Tom Cruise fans can't be right?

Is there anything about which 200 million Tom Cruise fans can't be wrong?

What about the entertainment value of a Tom Cruise movie?

Is that something about which 200 million Tom Cruise fans can't be right?

Is that something about which 200 million Tom Cruise fans can't be wrong?


Namaste

​
 
Angel said:
But if Tom Cruise fans can be right and Tom Cruise fans can be wrong, in what sense can't they be right?

And if Tom Cruise fans can be right and Tom Cruise fans can be wrong, in what sense can't they be wrong?

Are there any such senses?
Click to expand...

That depends not on arithmetic, but on the truth of the proposition, and that negates the usefulness of issues of popularity when discussing subjects of philosophical, religious and political thought.
 
Andalublue said:
That depends not on arithmetic, but on the truth of the proposition, and that negates the usefulness of issues of popularity when discussing subjects of philosophical, religious and political thought.
Click to expand...
To be sure, arithmetic or popularity (50 million Frenchmen, 200 million Tom Cruise fans, 5.8 billion believers) does not in itself provide grounds for the correctness ("can't be wrong") of a view, whereas truth (taken for argument's sake here as the correspondence between a proposed state of affairs and an actual state of affairs) does in itself provide such grounds.

However, in cases where truth is indeterminate (where the actual state of affairs is unknown or unknowable) or where truth is open to interpretation (as in Art) or in cases where it is not the truth of the proposition that is asserted, but an attitude toward the truth of the proposition (belief, desire, hope), perhaps other grounds are in play.

At any rate, assuming I haven't misrepresented your criteria, I aim to riff on them in my next meditation, to see where they lead.
 
Meditation the Sixth

If popularity (arithmetic) does not provide grounds for the truth of a statement, and if the truth of a statement lies in the correspondence between a proposed state of affairs and an actual state of affairs, then in what sense (meaning), if any, and on what grounds, if any, can the statement "200 million Tom Cruise fans can't be wrong" be true?

If popularity (arithmetic) does not provide grounds for the truth of a statement, then we may bracket (leave out of consideration), at least for the sake of analysis, the qualification "200 million."

We are left with "Tom Cruise fans can't be wrong."

The first thing to notice about this statement in its trimmed-down version is that it is a modal statement. The modal operator "can" appears as part of the verb phrase and predicate.

The statement is about possibility. Given the negation ("not"), the statement is, more accurately, about impossibility. The statement denies the possibility that Tom Cruise fans are wrong.

Does this mean that Tom Cruise fans are right?

Or only that they can be right?

Or neither of these, and only that they can't be wrong?​
 
Meditation the Seventh

And what are we to understand by the word "wrong" here? What work is the word doing in the sentence and what does it mean in context?

"Tom Cruise fans can't be wrong."

The word is used here as an adjective here, modifying "fans."

The word functions as a predicate adjective in relation to the subject of the sentence.

Thus, the word must mean "mistaken" or "incorrect."

And this, of the "fans" -- that is, that they cannot be mistaken or incorrect.

But what sense are we to make of this assertion of infallibility?

What does this mean?

​
 
Meditation the Eighth

If the truth of a statement lies in the correspondence between a proposed state of affairs and an actual state of affairs, then what is the actual state of affairs to which the proposed state of affairs ("Tom Cruise fans can't be wrong") corresponds?

Or does the truth of the statement ("Tom Cruise fans can't be wrong") correspond to the truth of whatever it is that Tom Cruise fans can't be wrong about, qua fans of Tom Cruise?

That is to say, does the proposed state of affairs correspond to an actual state of affairs in which all proposed states of affairs correspond to actual states of affairs?

In other words, is the statement ("Tom Cruise fans can't be wrong") about Tom Cruise fans or about Tom Cruise?​
 
Meditation the Ninth

So, is the statement ("Tom Cruise fans can't be wrong") about Tom Cruise fans or is the statement about Tom Cruise?

If the statement is about "Tom Cruise,"
and if the truth of a statement lies in the correspondence between a proposed state of affairs and an actual state of affairs,
then the "proposed state of affairs" contained in the statement ("Tom Cruise fans can't be wrong") must in some sense be "Tom Cruise."

If the statement is about "Tom Cruise fans,"
and if the truth of a statement lies in the correspondence between a proposed state of affairs and an actual state of affairs,
then the"proposed state of affairs" contained in the statement ("Tom Cruise fans can't be wrong") must in some sense be "Tom Cruise fans."​
 
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