From the text book, “Aristotle on False Reasoning” , by Scott G.

Schreiber - Assistant Professor of

Philosophy and Director of Classical Studies at St. Norbert College- SUNY Press
 1. My brief comment in(blue): The above paragraph is worth repeating…

Beliefs

Examples of false beliefs

1. Beliefs carried from childhood such as “woro en ryeko” even if an authority (elder,
educator, counselor, politician, advisor, etc) is talking nonsense. This partly stems from
undeveloped critical thinking skills – causing one to (falsely) hold as a belief that a
person/authority in one area is also an authority in any field.. . so everything he/she says
is the absolute truth. Most of these school mottos such as “woro en ryeko”, “work not
words”, “cingi acel pe pedo wangi”, “gini ikwiya tyeki yen”, etc are meant to
(hopefully) guide minors who are still under the guardianship of school heads, parents,
etc- and are yet in the process of developing elaborate critical thinking skills. When an
adult uses it to give counsel to fellow adults, the counsellor is expected to expound –
explain (describe and give reasons for)- the perspective from which he or she is speaking.
LAONA forum is for adults who are expected to be receptive to such higher levels of
thinking. In fact, one could write a bestselling book, if not a few page essay, on “woro en
ryeko” alone – just as one Fulbright scholar- a Prof in New York who also writes Science
articles for Wall Street Journal- picked up the[our?] conversation and decided to write a
whole book on “Eye of the beholder”(2015). I have seen hundreds of books 2014 and
2015 built from the little ideas we have in this document in the main Book stores in New
York. It’s beyond baffling! Our ideas everywhere!

2. Beliefs manifesting themselves in the form of another person taking false arguments as
true such as that presented by someone whose father, uncle etc.. was [supposedly] a lorry
driver, an army officer, a village chief,. etc in Lango , say in 1960’s at a time when no
one else, or very few people- owned a car, for example . Both the person presenting the
argument, should the argument be false, and the recipient of the argument, in this case,
hold false beliefs. [Again, this partly stems from undeveloped critical thinking skills from
 bother sides, failing to evaluate independently any ideas….]. This does not mean
appropriate recognition of some of these people is not important. It only becomes
negativity when such issues cloud or act as impediment to rational thoughts for issues at
hand.

3. A woman must respect (rather, must obey) a man no matter what! This is Lango culture!
(False belief, of course). It’s a bully!
4. Taking new developments too far beyond realistic boundaries. “Women are now
emancipated” – so anything a woman spouts must not be countered, lest the challenger is
branded misogynistic or sexist. [Trying to gain unfair advantage!]
5. Myths such as “their ancestors” were supernatural – carried from one generation to the
other without any proof, than sheer untraceable oral tradition. It could just be a
fabrication or some form of distorted history created by some charlatans- now part of a
belief system making the grandchildren to claim some special status. Note that there is a
difference between recognizing someone’s past contributions and the causing such a
[past] contribution to act as a false/irrelevant premise which ultimately affects current and
future arguments.
6. Someone conditioned (to feel inferior) in a foreign land comes back to influence the
Lango society with such false beliefs… such as “those people are better than us”. . [Well,
it might true the other culture is generally more advanced… but in most cases, this partly
stems from undeveloped critical thinking skills from both sides, failing to evaluate
independently any new ideas, in the case where the recipient culture just takes in new
things without filtering out the “bad” ideas..]. Then, someone may hold false belief that
they are more advanced in all ways… another way of say he or she is close-minded.
7. Anything we don’t understand now or that which is not comfortable for us – the answer is
in the Bible, or other holy law book. False belief, but very common. “He is telling the
truth because he is speaking under oath”.
8. Etc

Desires and Intentions

Let me give an example. A real one I encountered in 2013 when I was volunteering as
part of interim committee during the formative stage of LAONA. I was working with
these ladies who communicated with courtesy and grace at that time. Then this other
man, who was passive (not volunteering as part of the Interim Executive Committee) for
three months or so later joined as part of the Task Force). He told me then, “I see you
guys working very well, so my hope was raised. I was motivated to join the Task Force
after the previous frustration”.
“The other woman is very smooth”.
 The rest is history.

But in brief, what I am saying is that some of the false arguments get to prevail (thus
causing confusion) because some agents hold some other latent or cloudy desires and/or
intentions.

 Note: Someone could myopically criticize me for giving the example given above [-
that someone else’ desires for a woman,, etc] was one of the causes for the persistent
false arguments, diminishing my example on grounds that it is too explicit – and
therefore claiming that it is an indiscretion on my part. Well, the person who would
criticize me for giving such an example should note that if such false arguments are
affecting me or other persons (e.g their reputation, or stagnating organization’s
progress, etc) negatively (and especially when such a person is entrusted with an
authority), then there is no need to cover it up, especially after numerous attempts to
correct it in a civil manner yielded no fruits. By the time I decide to go the lengths of
giving such an example, it means the objective goal far much surpasses any costs
incurred as a result of embarrassments caused by the explicit example itself

Beliefs, Desires and Intentions , ALSO formalized (originally by some Australian

scientists- because of its importance) in Artificial Intelligence as the BDI architecture –
“Reasoning about beliefs, desires and intentions”- are an important factor in the success
any group work. [The slide was a presentation by my classmates in 2007, for the course
Multi-agent systems, of which I was part].

2. Why the “gomesi debate” is one of my ALL TIME favorite debates:

 Not because I care whether one wears a gomesi or not. It’s really not
my business what anyone wears, but here is my business: exposing the
right flaw, AS EXPLAINED HERE:
Imagine, in the “gomesi debate” (see Part 1), we all went the route of arguing about
primitiveness as the reason why the ancient Lango people wore bark and not gomesi clothes
(which may be true), and thereby concluding that in the modern day, regardless of place
(Uganda, North America, etc), all women are encouraged to wear gomesi otherwise one
would/should be “in for a surprise” if that not be the case at a convention- for the (absolute) truth
is as told “ by XXXX”. We would be arguing off-track- missing the important point! The real
flaw was the claim that the the entire thing was the “truth by XXXXX”. Yet the same article
was published in other avenues earlier. [The credibility of the other avenues may be
questionable too!]

So, for the discussion to continue objectively, XXXX had to convince us by “destroying” the
ALL the other premises (e.g the claims that there are no tailors, that the traffic and weather
conditions not conducive for wearing gomesi in NA, etc- thereby dismissing the counter-
conclusion that “one should not be in for surprise”) as fronted by the challenger. That’s how the
(false) arguments would be resolved. [Ignoring distractions such as “tongue in the cheek”
arguments. The person who fronted the tongue in the cheek argument is actually the person who
missed the entire point.]

Logic is not a child’s play: This is not a trivial thing because, in politics, for example, we see
people (e.g a political party) fronting two candidates X and Y and creating all confusion around
the two candidates by making the two candidates, X and Y, creating “pseudo-drama”, and the
majority of people forget the real and important point (of identifying the right flaw): are X and Y
the only people who have better qualifications to lead us? How about people of the other political
parties, for example? We forget to expose the right flaw and then go about arguing about how X
is “stumped” Y or vice versa (through name calling, ridicules, etc) , yet the important point is
that there are other people A, B, C, D… who might be better substitutes for X and/or Y? At the
end of the day, X, for example, wins the election – but the fact is that both X and Y have won for
they are birds of the same feather only disguising to exploit the masses. The cycle of “poverty”,
etc continues. “Who cares about your logic? This is politics!” turns into “we are a marginalized
lot”.
 ….

 Indeed, resolutions of false arguments and sophistical refutations are mostly what I have
been doing throughout the documents Parts 1 & 2.
 A parallel of resolutions in Computer Science are: notes 1 and notes 2 which are
prerequisites for the more advanced course “Automated Reasoning” ]

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