More on substituting

[Jonathan Lighter]

Check it out:

"There's no substitute for beer."  That means beer is good: accept no
substitutes.

"Champagne is no substitute for beer." That mean beer is good: better than
champagne.

If you're with me so far (and I'll bet somebody isn't), the following
sentence is insane:

"Eloquence is no substitute for dubious reasoning."

To show what I mean by "insane," here is the complete context:

"[Winston Churchill said the following about the H-bomb and the policy of
"mutually assured destruction":] 'By a process of sublime irony, [we] have
reached a state where safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and
survival the twin brother of annihilation.'

"Philosophers are a little touchy about language and logic:  eloquence is no
substitute for dubious reasoning. In plain English, Churchill and the others
are saying: _To reduce the risk of nuclear war, the risk must be
increased_."

The passage was written by Ron Hirschbein, who has "created programs in war
and peace studies at the University of California, Chico."  A few lines
later, Prof. Hirschbein writes with a straight face, "[P]hilosophers are
troubled by contradictions and unintelligible prose, especially when no
effort is made to resolve the contradictions and to render clear and
distinct expression."

Churchill's comment, made in 1955, is provocative. But Hirschbein seems to
believe that his use own of "no substitute for" is perfectly lucid. His
research over the years "focused on postmodern approaches to nuclear
crises." (Think about *that* one!)

The passage appears in the popular paperback for undergraduate thinkers,
_Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy_, ed. by R. B. Davis (Wiley, 2010).

JL

--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org