I agree with madmix.

I think the Islamic apologists in our country should direct their attention to websites such as
http://www.islam-watch.org/
(I neither endorse nor reject its contents; I’ve got no opinion about its contents).

This is a website set up by ex-Muslims, mostly from South Asia, to provide arguments for the falsity of Islamic claims. There are articles highly critical of Mohammad on the website. Our zealous Islamic apologists should focus on responding to their arguments, since they are unlikely to get this website closed down and cannot get these authors charged under our Sedition Act. And this website is much more detrimental to the Islamic cause than some blasphemous blogs that do not really provide any substantial reasons to think that there is anything wrong or bad with Islam or Mohammad.

It is very difficult for someone to produce a fake video evidence of someone else committing a crime without signs of fabrication.

It is very easy to put up an essay on a website and claim that it is written by the girl next door. I just have to know her name and some easily accessible details.

This distinction shows that the fact that, in the absence of other prima facie evidence implicating that woman, the police should not treat her as a suspect given those considerations raised by Jeffrey does not mean that they should also think that someone whose crime is captured by a video should be taken seriously if he claims that the video is fake, in the absence of signs of fabrication.

The police should only treat someone as a suspect when there are some reasonable grounds to do so. If we do not agree with this principle, we should be prepared to be arrested and then released on bail pending further investigation whenever the police feel like doing so even if they do not have reasonable grounds.

In this case, whether the police are justified in treating the woman as a suspect depends on whether they have reasonable grounds. Jeffrey argues that the fact that she reported the ‘crime’ (if insulting a prophet is a crime that can be charged under the Seditious Act in our country, it is a crime according to our country’s law. So Jeffrey was right in his earlier suggestion that she reported a crime [on the assumption that she did not author the blasphemous article and that the article is indeed blasphemous] – someone who authored the article committed a crime under Malaysian law. There may be another crime involved, depending on whether forgery is seen as criminal according to our country’s law.) and that on the reasonable considerations that her action does not fit very well with an ordinary person who indeed committed the offence or crime, the police do not have reasonable grounds to treat her as a suspect.

Of course, for all we know, the police might have other prima facie evidence implicating her which has not been revealed to the public. In that case, they would have reasonable grounds to treat her as a suspect. However, Jeffrey is right that the police do not have reasonable grounds on the sole considerations mentioned in the last paragraph.

Barring prima facie evidence, the police do not have reasonable grounds to treat her as a suspect. One might contend, as OrangRojak does, that the fact that the blasphemous writing is attributed to her with her name and photo appearing together with the writing is the required prima facie evidence. However, given that she has reported to be a victim of forgery, and given that forgery in this case is very easy, this cannot be a piece of prima facie evidence that justifies treating her as a suspect.

OrangRojak suggests that if her claim to be a victim of forgery is to be taken seriously, the police will also have to accept the claim of someone whose criminal act is captured in a video that the video is fabricated, in the absence of signs of fabrication. This is clearly a bad argument since being a victim of forgery in the sense of having a blasphemous article attributed to oneself is highly probable on ordinary standards of inductive reasoning, and being a victim of a fabricated video when there are no signs of fabrication is highly improbable on ordinary standards of inductive reasoning. Since there is a clear distinction between the former (X) and the latter (Y) in that X is highly probable and that Y is highly improbable, the argument from analogy that if we require the police to believe/accept X we will also have to require the police to believe/accept Y is clearly a bad argument, since the crucial distinction breaks down the analogy.

OrangRojak suggests that it is not the job of police to determine or judge whether X (i.e. the woman’s claim to be a victim of forgery) is true. This is a problematic suggestion. If we accept that the police should have reasonable grounds in the form of prima facie evidence to treat someone as a formal suspect (with the legal implications of requiring a bail when the formal suspect is released on bail pending futher investigation), then determining or judging whether X is true is crucial, since it is crucially relevant to whether there is such a prima facie evidence, and thus reasonable grounds.

Also, OrangRojak suggests that there are no testable criteria to determine the truths of X and Y given that there are no such criteria to determine the exact degree of difficulty (perhaps with an accurate number) of ‘falsely claiming the girl next door of putting up on a website something she did not write’ (A) and the exact degree of difficulty of ‘fabricating a video of someone’s committing a crime without leaving any trace of fabrication’ (B). Of course, he is right that no criteria are available for us to determine the exact degrees of difficulties of A and B. But this is a red herring. Why should we need exact degrees of difficulties? One simply has to show that A is comparatively easier than B. That is sufficient to determine or judge the truths of X and Y. It should be clear that in this case, A is much easier than B. In science and ordinary life, we have to rely on such comparison of the relative probabilities of various hypotheses on ordinary criteria of induction. Of course, inductive reasoning does not yield mathematical certainty. But this is what we have to rely on in science and ordinary life.

The police may well have reasonable grounds to get her to assist in the investigation given that the information extracted from her can be incorporated to determined whether X is true, and thus whether there is prima facie evidence that justifies her arrest (upon taking her as a formal suspect). But reasonable grounds to ask someone to assist in an investigation are different from reasonable grounds to treat someone as a formal suspect or to arrest someone as a formal suspect (in this case, arrest seems to be implied by her release on bail).

It’s high time that an external body such as IPCMC was set up in our country.

oops… ‘…implicating her INVOLVEMENT…’

Pronouns and referring expressions often confuse and lead to ambiguities and vagueness.

Yes, it is important to break down complex arguments into manageable components. That’s the whole purpose of using symbols to represent some smaller units of propositions within a complex and compound proposition. The use of symbols gives the argument a modular structure (akin to the idea of the modular structure of a computer programme), in which symbols such as X and Y serve as modules.

I haven’t employed any unneccesary technicalities here. I haven’t really used Boolean algrebra since no symbols of Boolean operators appear (i.e. the symbols for ‘and’, ‘or’ [v], ‘not’ [~]) in my comments. I have merely used some Roman letters to represent a propositions. By the way, these letters do not really function as ‘unknowns’, as in the case of mathematical algebra. They are not even meant to be statement variables as used in predicate logic. They are just meant to represent in a very informal way a proposition that is referred to more than once in my posts in order to avoid repetition and the use of potentially misleading pronouns and referring expressions. I apologise for the need to use these symbols to carry out my arguments and plead for patience.

oops… ‘… to represent [strike out ‘a’] propositions…’

No, I no longer need to write a PhD thesis.

oops… ‘…when [strike out ‘the’] those propositions…’
Sorry

oops… ‘…only DESERVES…’

When we join a discussion by giving our first comment or response to other’s points, we give a short comment providing the point and a short reason, as in my first response to OrangRojak’s argument against Jeffrey’s points. That comment is both concise and precise.

When someone questions my point or the reason given for that point, I’ve got to explain that point and elaborate the reason by addressing background assumptions. This naturally involves more words, since the scope has been widened from a point and a short reason to the deeper analysis of the point and the expansion of the reason into a network of background beliefs. But the increase of words does not mean the lack of conciseness, since it can be attributed to the expansion of the scope required by the natural progression of the discussion. By the way, to be precise in writing is to try one’s best to be explicit about one’s meanings in that one gives as much explanation as possible to prevent ambiguities and vagueness. Also, precision requires sensitivity to nuances in words and a range of possible interpretations of a particular proposition. Thus, in discussing others’ comments, one who is precise often has to refer to these nuances and interpretations, which naturally increase the length. Again, this does not mean unnecessary expansion of the length in violation of the principle of conciseness. The use of symbols is very common in analytic philosophy since symbols have been found to aid precision.

Yes, many people are just interested in coffee shop conversations. Perhaps many contributors in the blog are just interested in saying what they think about a particular issue and are not really interested to examine whether what they think about that issue is justified or reasonable. Fine! People who are just interested in doing so should just say whatever they think about the issue and leave it there. There are other people who are interested in examining whether their own view and others’ views on that particular issue are justified. Since the comments of the former are published in this public domain, the second group of contributors, who are interested in justified views, have the freedom to examine the views given by the first group, who are not interested in justified views. If the first group of commentators were really not interested in justified views, they wouldn’t have cared to respond to the criticisms made by members of the second group. If you really take your own remarks as a coffee-shop talk whose main function is to express whatever comes to your mind and whose justification does not really matter, you wouldn’t care if it is justified or not, and thus wouldn’t care to respond if others think that it is not justified. But whether the view is justified is important for someone who cares about discussing justified views on a particular matter.

If you’re not interested in expressing a justified view of a particular issue or getting into a serious discussion of the issue, there is no need to respond to my comments, whether they have touched on what you have said. You should just ignore them, and let others who are interested in justified views and serious discussion respond to them.

AhPek’s slanderous remark with regard to my recommendation of the Islam-watch website is completely unacceptable.

I did not recommend that website as a source of good information. I said in an earlier post that I did not endorse the contents. I merely suggest the Islamic apologists should focus their attention on that website. Anyone who reads that post will find that AhPek has deliberated twisted the post. Below is that comment:
‘Lee Wang Yen Says:

Yesterday at 18: 13.15
I agree with madmix.

I think the Islamic apologists in our country should direct their attention to websites such as
http://www.islam-watch.org/
(I neither endorse nor reject its contents; I’ve got no opinion about its contents).

This is a website set up by ex-Muslims, mostly from South Asia, to provide arguments for the falsity of Islamic claims. There are articles highly critical of Mohammad on the website. Our zealous Islamic apologists should focus on responding to their arguments, since they are unlikely to get this website closed down and cannot get these authors charged under our Sedition Act. And this website is much more detrimental to the Islamic cause than some blasphemous blogs that do not really provide any substantial reasons to think that there is anything wrong or bad with Islam or Mohammad.’

If you don’t like my comments, there is no need to post sarcastic remarks about them. Just ignore them. In any case, you shouldn’t make false claims about my comments.

Onlooker Politics says:
‘You would never be able to reach upon a valid and logically correct conclusion if you continued to base your inferences on the faulty assumption’

This comment is irrelevant.

As I mention in an earlier post, the kind of reasoning involved in inferences about whether someone is guilty of a crime is INDUCTIVE. Only a deductive argument can be valid. All inductive arguments are deductively invalid. The measure for inductive arguments is ‘inductively strong’.

By the way, you should have just said that ‘you would never be able to reach a true/correct conclusion if you continued to base your inferences on a faulty assumption, since the validity of an argument has nothing to do with whether its premises/assumptions are true or false/faulty.

Jeffrey, do you really think that AhPek’s comment posted at 16: 59.46 today is fair?

Oops… ‘…as a FORMAL suspect…’
sorry

Onlooker Politics says:

‘If you know all about the Police Powers in Malaysia, perhaps you will no longer be willing to waste your time to attempt to do an analysis further on whether there is any arrest being conducted on the Accountant and whether the arrest is a wrongful one.’

I find this comment very strange. I have been discussing whether there are reasonable grounds to treat the woman as a formal suspect. I wonder what the great or excessive police power in Malaysia has to do with the point I’m discussing. If the Malaysian police take actions based on their excessive power even when they lack reasonable grounds, aren’t I still right in contending that they have treated the woman as a formal suspect without reasonable grounds? And treating someone as a formal suspect without reasonable grounds is wrong – morally wrong, though it may not be legally wrong in Malaysia.

If someone claim that Malaysian police are corrupt, do you think that he should not waste time analysing or arguing whether they have done something wrong just because he is aware of the fact that many policemen take bribes?

Yes, inductive reasoning can make justified inferences about intention insofar as inductive reasoning yields justified judicial conclusions.

In many criminal cases, a judge has to conclude via a complex series of inductive reasoning that a defendant of a certain charge has a certain motivation (or intention) in order to arrive at the conclusion that he is (probably) guilty. For example, inductively ‘proving’ the existence of an intention is crucial in cases of premeditated murder.

No, I didn’t say that perhaps most people here were not interested in formalism.

What I said was that perhaps most people here were not interested in expressing justified views.

I think it would be best for those who are not interested in expressing justified views to ignore my comments. There are some who are interested in justified views. Let those who are interested respond to my comments.

Did I say or imply that anyone was logically wrong in using inductive approach in this issue?

How could I have said or implied this, since I’ve reiterated that I’ve been using inductive reasoning and that inductive reasoning is what we have to rely on in science and ordinary life?

Please reread my comment on the irrelevance of one of your comments.

AhPek says:
‘…Like I said you can just make it simple but no you have to take 3 comments to make your point…’

Does expressing my points in three separate posts violate the principle of simplicity?

I responded to three different points raised in your comment in three separate and very short posts to make it more manageable, since I have been advised to simplify a complex argument. One way to simplify a complex argument is to break it into smaller components and to deal with each component in a separate post.

I have consistently shown that I’m only interested in discussing particular issues by focusing on comments on those issues, my arguments for my views, the responses of others to my views and methodology, the defence of my views, and of my methodology, etc. I have not raised the issue of ego. Perhaps one think that defending one’s view to the hilt is equivalent to ‘the need of showing ego’. But I don’t think so. For me it is the need to know the truth that drives me.

Would you please justify your claim that I’m smug and egoistic?

I’ve not used formalism. I’ve merely used some Roman letters to represent some propositions to avoid repetition and the use of pronouns and referring expressions.

That’s not formalism. That doesn’t even qualify as semi-formalism. To be formalistic I’ll at least have to use Boolean algebra. But I’ve not used symbols for Boolean operators in my posts.

In any case, God-fearing analytic philosophers have used formal arguments to argue against views of other philosophers. I can cite at least three big names.

Whatever it is, one shouldn’t simply conclude that ‘a person is smug and egoistic if that person defends some of his views to the hilt or if that person manages to show the weakness of his opponent’s arguments’ (let’s call the sentence within the quotation marks P).

Disclaimer: This is only meant to be a general point. I’m not suggesting that P is AhPek’s reason for asserting that I’m smug and egoistic. Since he does not justify his assertion and says that it arises from a kind of feeling, which he allegedly shares with ‘quite a few’ commentators here, I do not claim that P describes his reason for making that assertion.

How is that point about my smugness and egoism relevant to whether the police have reasonable grounds to treat that woman as a formal suspect?

No, as I’ve shown consistently in my posts, I’m not happy to just make assertions or give opinions without providing reasons or arguments. I’ve been giving reasons for my claims. But you have not given reasons for your claim that I’m smug and egoistic. That’s the difference.

oops… ‘ … mean BY bloviating…’

Thanks, Jeffrey, for taking the time to explain this!

I may have misunderstood AhPek’s comment as sacrcasm. If so, I would be happy to apologise.

We’re not asking the subjective question of whether someone feels that she has been treated as a formal suspect. So the interesting boundary logic is irrelevant here.

We’re talking about whether the police are morally justified to treat, from a legal perspective, someone as a formal suspect without reasonable grounds.

This is an objective question that involves reasoning about the ethics of treating someone, from a legal perspective, as a formal suspect. One of the key issues is whether certain police action constitutes treating her as a formal suspect from the perspective of Malaysian law. This is an objective question we can discuss. Whether she feels she has been thus treated is irrelevant.

oops… ‘… comment as SARCASM…’
sorry for the double corrections!

You seem to have conflated ‘relevant to our discussion here’ with ‘relevant to or admissable in a court of law’.

Whether my opinion and those of all the non-experts on Malaysian law here are admissable in a court of law will of course have bearing on the question of whether these opinions are reliable. If they there are admissable in a court of law, we have good reason to think that they are reliable. If they are not admissable because we are not lawyers, then we must find out from experts whether these opinions are reliable.

However, whether these opinions are reliable or not, they are relevant to our discussion here, though they are not relevant to or admissable in a law of court.

Neither do I read it as a denigration. And whether it is a denigration is not an issue for me at all. I’m only interested in showing that he is wrong to claim that my opinion is not relevant to the discussion here: while opinions of non-experts may not be reliable and may not be admissable to a court of law, they are nonetheless relevant to the discussion here.

Jeffrey says:
‘Put it in another way even even if it were opinion of a lawyer specialising in criminal law, his opinion may or may not be relevant (in what I think is Undergrad2’s sense), depending ultimately on the judge whether he agrees that that opinion really represents the law as promulgated and intended by Parliament, which it is his task to adjudge and decide (including whether it is “right” to treat the woman as suspect ….)’

I think it is more accurate to say that ‘his opinion may or may not be accurate/reliable’ rather than saying that it may or may not be ‘relevant’.

Suppose two lawyers A and B are talking about a legal issue in a court of law in Malaysia. A has an accurate understanding of Malaysian law and thus provides an accurate opinion on the matter. B provides an inaccurate opinion on the matter because he doesn’t have adequate knowledge or understanding in that aspect of Malaysian law. The judge decides to accept A’s opinion. But that does not mean that what B says is irrelevant. It is just inaccurate.

This argument also shows that we shouldn’t treat ‘admissable in a court of law’ as a synomyn to ‘relevant to a court of law’. Thus, I shouldn’t have followed Undergrat2 in assuming this synonymous relation in my last two posts.

Jeffrey says:
‘…but whether opinion based on logic, common sense, ethical points count at the end of the day, that’s an other story.’

I think what you mean by ‘whether these count’ is ‘whether these are accurate’. On this interpretation I completely agree with you and Undergrad2, as shown by my previous posts.

What I disagree is to take ‘whether these count’ as ‘whether these are relevant’.

Thus, while Undergrad2 can question the accuracy and reliability of my opion on that particular issue, he shouldn’t have said that it is irrelevant.

The issue involves both legal and ethical aspects. Note that I’m not saying that the both legal and ethical considerations are relevant to the legal aspect of the issue and that both legal and ethical considerations are relevant to the ethical aspect of the issue.

Only legal considerations are relevant to the legal aspect of the isuse, and only ethical considerations are relevant to the ethical aspect. This is the sense in which both legal and ethical aspects are involved in this issue.

Well, even if we accept that ‘what is relevant to a court of law’ is equivalent to ‘what is admissable in a court of law’, my contention that Undergrad2 shouldn’t have said that my opinion is not relevant is still right. This is because what matters here is whether my opinion is relevant to the discussion we’ve been carrying out here, not whether it is relevant to a court of law (if we assume that synonymous relation)

Neither do I take it as a personal criticism. I take his statement as referring to my comment not being relevant to the discussion here. Criticising someone’s comment as irrelevant to the discussion is not a personal attack. I’ve also critised others for making irrelevant points. I don’t think these criticisms are personal attacks. They are just criticisms of an aspect of the merits of one’s argument or point (other aspects are validity, soundness, etc).

So I did not respond to this particular criticism of him because I take it as a personal attack. I responded to it because I think that the criticism was unjustified and wrong – i.e. while my opinion may be unreliable and inadmissable in a court, it is still relevant to the discussion here.

Since I don’t think that ‘admissable in a court of law’ is synonymous to ‘relevant to a court of law’ (see my explanation in my previous post), I don’t think his criticism should be interpreted in terms of ‘irrelevant to a court of law’.

Of course, I agree with him that my opinion may not be reliable and may not be admissable to a court of law. But that is irrelevant to whether it is relevant to the discussion here.

I’m not sure whether ‘relevance’ is used in such a techincal sense in law that ‘relevant to a court of law’ is synonymous with ‘admissable in a court of law’. We need to consult experts or some citations from the legal literature to find this out.

According to one source (which I don’t know whether it is reliable), ‘relevance’ is one of the criteria to determine whether a piece of evidence is admissible. Other criteria include ‘reliability’. If this is correct, then relevance is not equivalent to admissability, since it is one of a criteria to determine admissability.

Thanks, Undergrad2,

That’s exactly my point. I have been saying that relevance may not be equivalent to admissability, and you have just confirmed to me that they are not equivalent.

I did not claim that whatever that is relevant is admissable. That I did not make this claim should be clear from my suggestion that relevance is ONE OF the criteria to determine admissability. A piece of evidence must also satisfy other criteria besides the criterion of relevance to be admissable.

‘It has first to be relevant before it could be admissable.’ That’s the meaning of ‘one of the criteria’.

One of the criteria to be an assistant professor at a particular univeristy is having a PhD degree. This is the same as saying that ‘one has to first obtain a PhD before one can be hired as an assistant professor at that university’

The fact that A is a necessary condition of B implies that A cannot be synonymous with or equivalent to B, whatever context you take it. You can say that something that is B is necessarily A. (In this case, B entails A). But the fact that what is A is not necessarily B does not allow one to take A and B as synonymous with or equivalent to each other.

If someone says that my opinion is admissable to a court of law, you can claim that my opinion is relevant to a court of law, since the fact that relevance to a court of law is necessary to admissability to a court of law implies that admissability entails relevance. i.e. something that is admissable must be relevant.

But the converse is not true – it is not true to say that something that is relevant must be admissable.

Thus, if someone says that my opinion is irrelevant to a court of law, it cannot be taken as equivalent to the claim that my opinion is inadmissable to a court of law.

Also, the claim that my opinion is inadmissable to a court of law cannot be taken as the claim that my opinion is irrelevant to a court of law, since the negation of B does not entail the negation of A even when B entails A.

Of course, irrelevance entails inadmissability. But irrelevance is not equivalent to inadmissability. Irrelevance is only equivalent to inadmissability if there is a bicondontional relation between irrelevance and inadmissability or between relevance and admissability, i.e. if irrelevance entails and is entailed by inadmissability or if relevance entails and is entailed by admissability.

Thus, you should just say that irrelevance entails inadmissability. Entailment is not sufficient for synonymity. So you can’t even say that there is synonymity in your context 2.