Broken English and Broken Logic

By profession I'm a computer scientist, which doesn't mean that I program for a living, or that I can fix your computer when it fails to boot, but that I am interested in, and study, the mathematical and logical foundations of computing. A family of logics which I have used various times in my work is that of multi-valued logic - logics used to reason about values other than truth and falsity, possibly denoting different levels of truth or certainty. Reading Andrew Borg Cardona's blog on the Times, and Daphne Caruana Galizia's blog, and comments on other blogs, I've been toying with the idea of defining a new logic - Malti-valued logic, where the truth and falsity of a statement is to be assessed keeping the context of local political values of the author in mind.

Let me start by quoting two selections from their writings which led to this article. Please feel free to read the whole articles, to ensure that I have not quoted them out of context.


"Would Erika have been a Labour supporter if she weren't Leo [Brincat]'s daughter? I seriously doubt it. She's much too intelligent."

Daphne Caruana Galizia
Comment in Bitchin' Time on J'Accuse's Blog
http://jaccuse.wordpress.com/2008/06/10/bitchin-time
13th June 2008

"[...] I can't help musing on whether [...] there is an educational divide still in this country. For some reason, the people who write in not to insult me seem to do it in much better English than the ones who do it to call me names."

Andrew Borg Cardona
For Some Variety, Times of Malta
13th June 2008

So, it seems that according to them, being intelligent, and being able to write in good English implies you must sympathise with the Nationalist Party, unless obviously you come from a die-hard Labour family. Funny - I always assumed that an intelligent person would refuse to make a categorical statement about agreeing with one party or another. Parties change, their policies change, their leaders change. Blood ties to either party for life have always struck me as particularly stupid and irrational. Which is probably why I never included either ABC or DCG in my book of intellectuals. Rather the opposite. Sympathising with a party and supporting the policies (or more likely some policies) of a party at a particular point in time is what I always thought would be the intelligent person's behaviour.

One thing that I found disgusting in the last election campaign was the implicit message in some of the supposedly independent local media that not voting for the PN was tantamount to irrationality, to stupidity. As soon as someone voiced a pro-MLP stance, the media struck out, to the extent that we've now all heard the "but how can s/he's vote Labour - s/he's too intelligent to do that" comment. Those voicing a pro-AD stance, were labelled as "paving the way for Labour" and hence, by transitivity also stupid. Simply raising questions about cases such as JPO's meant you were believing Alfred Sant's fabrications, hence making you an enemy of the people - sorry I meant the PN, which we were promptly reminded, was the same thing. This is the logic I cannot understand, dear Borg Cardonas and Caruana Galizias.

Give me broken English over broken logic any time.