I’ve been waiting since Fall 1989 to use the term modus tollens again

The National Review isn’t really a part of my daily routine, but the new piece by Byron York is worth a gander, if for no other reason than to get a glimpse of the hamster wheel that runs Bush’s brain:

Most of all, though, Bush said he realizes that the American people share that frustration, too. “People, most of them, are out there saying, ‘What are you doing? Get after ’em,'” Bush said. He’s heard it himself. “I’m from Texas,” Bush continued. “My buddies are saying, are you doing enough, not are you doing too little. They want to know, are we winning. They want to know, this mighty country, are we doing what it takes to win?”

It would be fair to say that no one fully knew the answer to that question. At times during the conversation, the president seemed vexed — not beaten, not downcast, but vexed — by conditions in Iraq. Bush didn’t say so, but from his words it seemed hard to deny that in some significant measure the insurgents and the sectarian killers are in control in the country, and that the fate of the American mission is in their hands. “The frustration is that the definition of success has now gotten to be, how many innocent people are dying?” the president said. “And if there’s a lot dying, it means the enemy is winning.” He paused. “That doesn’t mean they’re winning.”

Here, if I recall Philosophy 101 properly — and I’m pretty certain I don’t — George W. Bush is applying modus tollens reasoning (by denying the consequent). Bush doesn’t complete his argument, but let’s follow the logic if we can.

(A) If there’s a lot of dying, the enemy is winning
(B) The US is not losing.
Ergo, there is not a lot of dying.

I’m starting to think that George Bush might be somewhat obtuse.

. . . SteveG explores Bush’s logic further in the comments:

It’s a question-begging definition — “making a claim true by definition by importing a highly questionable definition of a key word into one of the premises.”

I can say that there is a giant schnauzer on my desk if by “giant schnauzer” I mean computer monitor — it just isn’t what any sane person who knows the language would mean by “giant schnauzer.”

We are winning because we are winning and we know that we are winning because we are being victorious in our winning and any evidence that purports to show we are not winning is faulty because we are in fact winning (given that “winning” means whatever it is we are doing at the moment).

. . . And Matt Weiner as well:

The particular philosophical maneuver Bush is using is due to Quine, who observed that the evidence never requires you to reject any proposition; you can always save it by adjusting your auxiliary hypotheses. Or maybe to Moore, who argued (of the existence of the external world) “I am more convinced of this proposition than I could be of the premises of any argument to the contrary.”