Sophistry

The more I thought about what Pliny the Elder had said, the more I became convinced that he was using sophistry.

Pliny, I said, it isn't true our clothes are upside down when we look at them. It's not our clothes that are upside down, but our eyes.

Go on, said Pliny.

You see, if we were to turn around with our head still in the looking-down-at-our-clothes position, and looked into the mirror......yes I realise this would not be easy..... perhaps by crooking our arm and looking through the gap between arm and body, then we would see the clothes on the person in the mirror upside down as well.

I cannot argue with your logic, said Pliny. And the person in the mirror would be you, in that case.

You were easy to convince, Pliny!

I saw you trying it in front of the mirror, just now. It was a convincing proof.

I do enjoy philosophy, I said.

Yes indeed, agreed Pliny. We have acquitted ourselves well. Nor could we be accused of 'digesting without eating' as Iris Murdoch accused her male philosophers of doing.

Why not, Pliny?

Because all of this resulted from the eating of a muffin.

So it did!

If it was a muffin, he added.

Of course it was a muffin, I muttered under my breath.

Inferences and Implications

That doesn't sound like a muffin, frowned Pliny the Elder.

You mean my lunch the other day? Why not? I asked.

A muffin is a bread product, said Pliny, baked in small batches.

The modern muffin is more like a large cupcake, I said. That's what my lunch looked like.

But, argued Pliny, it was made from risotto.

It was shaped like a muffin, I insisted. So it was a muffin. I imagine it was baked in a muffin tray.

That does not make it a muffin, said Pliny. If I baked a lump of clay in a muffin tray, would it be a muffin?

Is this a cooking question or an art question? I asked.

I'm merely pointing out, said Pliny, that you have made an inference where no inference is due.

An object in the shape of a muffin, I said, implies a muffin tray, and a muffin tray implies a muffin.

No object implies the existence of any other, remarked Pliny.

Now that rings a bell, I said , trying to recall where I'd heard it.

Hume's Mirror, said Pliny. Don't you remember?