Free Monty Python and Philosophy by Gary L. Hardcastle Page A

but this is Abuse.
    He then finds Mr. Vibrating in the argument room:
    CUSTOMER : Ah, is this the right room for an argument?
    MR. VIBRATING : I told you once.
    CUSTOMER : No you haven’t.
    MR. VIBRATING : Yes I have.
    CUSTOMER : When?
    MR. VIBRATING : Just now.
    CUSTOMER : No you didn’t.
    MR. VIBRATING : Yes I did.
    CUSTOMER : You didn’t.
    MR. VIBRATING : I did!
    CUSTOMER : You didn’t!
    MR. VIBRATING : I’m telling you I did!
    CUSTOMER : You did not!!
    Slyly evoking the English pantomime tradition, the professional arguer simply contradicts every statement that the man seeking the argument makes. 24 The customer objects that
    CUSTOMER : I came here for a good argument.

    MR. VIBRATING : No you didn’t; no, you came here for an argument .
    CUSTOMER : An argument isn’t just contradiction.
    MR. VIBRATING : It can be.
    CUSTOMER : No it can’t. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
    MR. VIBRATING : No it isn’t.
    The customer goes on to draw the distinction as follows: “Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says.”

What Kind of Argument Would You Like?
    The sketch works for numerous reasons. It seems absurd to “try out” an argument clinic, especially when, as any British viewer at that time knew, any normal person could get abuse and contradiction for free, just by calling a tradesperson or trying to buy something out of the ordinary at a department store (most older Britons of the time would have found the cheese shop sketch only a slight exaggeration of their experience). The idea that someone is able to turn on and off the habit of irritated contradiction at will is also funny. One of the things that makes the sketch work is that the professional’s understanding of what an argument is fits well with a certain ordinary-language understanding of “argument.” But in that sense of argument it is so easy to have one that it is hard to imagine anyone paying for one. The customer who wants
to engage in something akin to a verbal game of chess wants his ideas to be taken on, thought through, and refuted, in an intellectually stimulating process. He wants, in other words, something like a philosophical argument, but, unphilosophically, has failed to specify what he wants.
    The professional contradictor does, in fact, display an ability to argue in this sense: he correctly distinguishes ‘argument’ from ‘good argument’ and rightly points out that an argument can consist of mere iterated contradiction. But his arguing about the argument just makes it even more frustrating for the client. He will not engage in a true argument about anything substantive.
    Philosophers like the sketch for at least two reasons. First, argument is just about all we are good at: it is not at all uncommon for a philosopher to exclaim dismissively “but that’s an empirical, not a philosophical, issue,” and by that they mean that evidence is irrelevant: argument is the only guide to the truth. Second, frankly, the idea of a world in which our narrow range of skills find a market like the market for accountants and hairdressers strikes us both as delightful and absurd; we fantasize that in that world we might make more money.
    But the sketch also poses a puzzle. As I mentioned, viewers at the time would have known that contradiction could be accessed for free just by walking into any shop or workplace. Why, though, would someone go to an argument clinic for a “good” argument? What the client wants is for someone to show him what is wrong with his own beliefs and reasons for those beliefs. Why would he pay for that ? Doesn’t it seem, as I said earlier, absurd?
    One possible reason would be, simply, for intellectual stimulation: a kind of work-out for the mind, or mental game of tennis. But there is another, rather different, reason, which I shall spend the rest of this chapter explaining. It is, in