Logos, What the World Needs More of
Science is based in logos. Research and experiments are attempts to establish facts, and to draw correct conclusions based on those facts. While all of science is based on this, I am a personal trainer, so I’m most familiar with the health sciences and research. When discussing health, it would seem obvious that it should be a factual process. If I do A, B will happen. However, since health involves behavior, hence psychology, it is never that straightforward. Straying from factual arguments can be harmful, since some choices are clearly better than others when it comes to our health.
No genuine argument can be made without solid facts and logical conclusions. You can’t make good conclusions with bad facts. When data is altered, or completely made up, all conclusions drawn from it are nullified. Honesty and thoroughness are the qualities that make facts good. A bad fact is either an honest mistake, or a lie. It is impossible to think about logos without ethos, because lying is both a logical and an ethical failure. An example of this comes from an article by Adam Marcus in Anesthesiology News. He writes of a Dr. Reubens who published false …show more content…
The problem often is a question of perception. Dr. Andrew Wakefield is still defending himself and decrying the MMR (the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine). The authors of the popular diet books are as fervent as religious messiahs. Whether their facts are shaky, nonexistent, or selectively chosen, they still believe them, or at least refuse to deny them. Factual arguments don’t seem like they should be so emotional, but they obviously are, leading to less truth and clarity, rather than more. We aren’t Vulcans, living by logic; we are motivated by greed, pride, fear and other emotions. The best we can hope for is to hold logos up as the ideal to strive for, and keep reaching for
Science is based in logos. Research and experiments are attempts to establish facts, and to draw correct conclusions based on those facts. While all of science is based on this, I am a personal trainer, so I’m most familiar with the health sciences and research. When discussing health, it would seem obvious that it should be a factual process. If I do A, B will happen. However, since health involves behavior, hence psychology, it is never that straightforward. Straying from factual arguments can be harmful, since some choices are clearly better than others when it comes to our health.
No genuine argument can be made without solid facts and logical conclusions. You can’t make good conclusions with bad facts. When data is altered, or completely made up, all conclusions drawn from it are nullified. Honesty and thoroughness are the qualities that make facts good. A bad fact is either an honest mistake, or a lie. It is impossible to think about logos without ethos, because lying is both a logical and an ethical failure. An example of this comes from an article by Adam Marcus in Anesthesiology News. He writes of a Dr. Reubens who published false …show more content…
The problem often is a question of perception. Dr. Andrew Wakefield is still defending himself and decrying the MMR (the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine). The authors of the popular diet books are as fervent as religious messiahs. Whether their facts are shaky, nonexistent, or selectively chosen, they still believe them, or at least refuse to deny them. Factual arguments don’t seem like they should be so emotional, but they obviously are, leading to less truth and clarity, rather than more. We aren’t Vulcans, living by logic; we are motivated by greed, pride, fear and other emotions. The best we can hope for is to hold logos up as the ideal to strive for, and keep reaching for