VegettoEX wrote:I don't see what's wrong with penguintruth's logic. It would be exactly the same if Viz made up dialog and re-wrote character intentions throughout the manga. They generally didn't, but it went there a few times, and we've certainly called them out on it when they did/do.
If your viewpoint is that they are responsible for accurately portraying the product they've licensed, then there you go. Just because Toei took liberties with their product doesn't somehow give a "get out of jail free" card to the foreign-language adaptation companies.
And if you say it does, the only logic you've provided in defense of it is... well... I haven't actually seen any real logic in defense of it, just a red herring "LOOK OVER THERE AT TOEI! (please leave my dub alone, please leave my dub alone)~!!!"
With all due respect I think that you and penguintruth are both guilty of committing two logical fallacies in your response to the point which you are addressing; namely the fallacies of missing the point and the straw man fallacy. Furthermore I think that your charge of the red herring fallacy is unjustified and results from your having committed the fallacy of missing the point. I think that Kid Buu actually does bring out a legitimate problem for penguintruth's argument. Before I proceed with my explanation I would like to make a few points.
First, I am responding to your comment without having read past this page in the thread so I am at the moment ignorant to the way this discussion has progressed, so if any of this has been brought up already or the discussion has been resolved I apologize.
Second, I am not providing a defense of Kid Buu's point so as to disagree with you and penguintruth. In general I agree with your position, although for different reasons. I think that it is quite clear that a fan of the dub and a fan of the original are not fans of the same story. What a dub fan is a fan of, to whatever degree, is indeed a version of a story that does not at all reflect the intrinsic artistic value of the story itself. However I find the issue brought up by Kid Buu to be legitimate and potentially crippling to penguintruth's argument, hopefully I will be able to present an adequate explanation of why this is the case.
Third, it is entirely possible that I am not correct in my interpretation of what Kid Buu's intentions are and if I am not then I apologize. Nonetheless I hope that the interpretation of Kid Buu's point which I provide, whether an accurate interpretation of what he personally meant to express or not, will help to shed some light on what I take to be the fallacy in penguintruth's reasoning.
Finally, Kid Buu as an individual is responsible for presenting his points as clearly as possible, and the condescending and rhetorical way in which he has done so does not lend itself particularly well to clarity, so Kid Buu may be just as responsible for any misunderstandings as either of you are. I will strive to be as clear and fair as possible and I hope that I don't come off as condescending since that is not my intent at all.
With the formalities out of the way I would like to first explain what I take penguintruth's argument to be and what I take Kid Buu's response to be. If I have unfairly represented either of you then I apologize. Penguintruth's reasoning hinges upon the following premise:
"If a person is a fan of a version of Dragon Ball which includes changes which radically undermine the author's original story, then they are not a fan of Dragon Ball."
There is little evidence that can be provided in support of this premise but there is certainly something intuitively compelling about it. If two versions of a thing are radically different then how could we honestly say that a person who is a fan of one version is a fan of the same thing as a person who is a fan of the other version? It certainly makes good sense to say that they are not and thus I think that it is reasonable to concede the truth of penguintruth's premise.
From this premise and the additional premise "the dub is a version of Dragon Ball which includes changes which radically undermine the author's original story" (a premise which I think that we can safely admit the truth of) penguintruth's conclusion that "a fan of the dub of Dragon Ball is not a fan of Dragon Ball"
does logically follow (by way of the logical rule of inference known as modus ponens). Thus penguintruth's argument (or rather my interpretation of it) as it stands is not only entirely valid (the premises, if true, guarantee the truth of the conclusion) but also is likely sound as well (the two premises are probably both true).
However, Kid Buu's problem with this argument shows that the first premise of penguintruth's argument logically implies a result that we ought to consider entirely problematic, if not ridiculous. The first premise, which penguintruth's argument depends on for its validity, also leads to the conclusion that "no fan of the Dragon Ball
anime is a fan of Dragon Ball" a conclusion which obviously applies equally to both sub and dub fans, and which most of us would probably admit is ridiculous. Thus if penguintruth is to seriously advocate this argument he logically must commit himself to a conclusion which is undesirable, and thus penguintruth's argument is seriously flawed. I will hopefully be able to clarify why this is the case a little later, but first I must provide an interpretation of Kid Buu's point.
Kid Buu's point, I think, is that the following premise is true "the Dragon Ball anime includes changes which radically undermine the author's original story". Aside from the evidence that Kid Buu cites, there are many instances of filler which create explicit inconsistencies in the author's original story (see the filler guide). Indeed it could be argued that every bit of filler, whether it creates inconsistencies or not, is a radical change which undermines the author's original story since the author never intended it to be included. But this is merely an aside and now is not the time to discuss whether or not this is true. What matters in the present discussion, and what is true, is that there are pieces of filler which are inconsistent with the author's original story.
Now that we have a clear explanation of the objection (hopefully it is clear at least) we can now see how the objection creates a legitimate problem for penguintruth's argument. Recall penguintruth's argument:
Premise 1: If a person is a fan of a version of Dragon Ball which includes changes which radically undermine the author's original story, then they are not a fan of Dragon Ball.
Premise 2: The dub includes changes which radically undermine the author's original story
Conclusion: A fan of the dub is not a fan of Dragon Ball
Now if we replace premise two of this argument with the premise suggested by Kid Buu we have an equally sound, equally valid argument, identical in logical form, which generates a ridiculous conclusion:
Premise 1: If a person is a fan of a version of Dragon Ball which includes changes which radically undermine the author's original story, then they are not a fan of Dragon Ball.
Premise 2: The anime includes changes which radically undermine the author’s original story.
Conclusion: A fan of the anime version of Dragon Ball is not a fan of Dragon Ball.
Once again, by the laws of logic the conclusion of the second argument is necessarily true if the first two premises are true. Penguintruth has three options here. He can accept the conclusion of the second argument, in which case he would be accepting a conclusion which is most likely ridiculous. He could deny the second premise uncovered by Kid Buu, in which case he is denying a clear truth about the anime. Or finally he can deny premise one, in which case he must also deny the premise which makes his own argument work and consequently reject his argument. In simple terms penguintruth has to either give up his main argument that dub fans are not fans of the anime and try to find a different argument to support that conclusion, or he has to accept both arguments, in which case he has to accept that fans of the anime are not fans of Dragon Ball. If penguintruth’s argument is correct then we must also accept that fans of the anime are not fans of Dragon Ball, most of us would consider this ridiculous (correctly so I think), and so if we want to allow fans of the anime to be fans of Dragon Ball we must admit that penguintruth’s argument is incorrect (that is, we must take the third of these three options).
This is clearly a drastic problem with penguintruth’s logic, and one which produces an undesirable result. I hope that I have explained clearly why I think this is to be the case. Now that I have explained the problem with penguintruth’s logic I would like to explain how the responses provided by you and penguintruth to this objection committed the two fallacies I mentioned above.
You and penguintruth have clearly missed the point of what Kid Buu was saying I think. You took his point to be this: “since Toei’s anime adaptation of the manga contains inaccuracies, it is okay that the dub also contains inaccuracies, so please look at that instead of the problems of the dub”. Whether you intend to be or not this is really unfair to Kid Buu, who really did have a good insight. He never once said that the problems in the dub are okay because of the problems in the anime. In fact he explicitly denied that this was his point. Rather his point was that if penguintruth is right then fans of the anime are not fans of Dragon Ball. This appears to be a textbook example of missing the point (which is a legitimate and well documented fallacy, not something I am pulling out of the air).
This is why VegettoEX is incorrect to accuse Kid Buu of committing the fallacy of the red herring. You could only be correct that Kid Buu has committed a red herring if Kid Buu was in fact making the point that Toei’s inaccuracies excuse Funimation’s inaccuracies, which he wasn’t so far as I can tell. In other words you can only rightly claim that Kid Buu has committed the red-herring fallacy by missing his point; your accusation of a fallacy can only be correct if your response to Kid Buu is fallacious.
Far more unfair however is that you both seem to have not only missed the point, but also straw-manned Kid Buu. A straw man is the fallacy of presenting your opponent's position as being exceptionally weaker than it actually is, a dishonest move which has no logical relevance whatsoever. There are many ways in which straw manning can be done, but the two of you have done so by completely misrepresenting the entire point of Kid Buu’s claim and throwing in condescending remarks to make it seem completely weak and stupid. I would like to clarify that I am not accusing you of consciously trying to make Kid Buu look like shit by misrepresenting his claims, but whether that was your intent or not it seems to be exactly what your responses do. And once again some of the blame falls on Kid Buu’s shoulders, his lack of clarity certainly doesn’t do any favours to his argument.
Contrary to what Penguintruth says this argument is not at all weak, but legitimate and strong, and if we are to successfully explain why a fan of the dub is not actually a fan of Dragon Ball it is our duty to find either a solution to Kid Buu’s challenge or to construct a new argument which is not susceptible to the problem. I think that we ought to take it more seriously and attempt to construct a response or a better argument rather than being dismissive.
P.S. I hope that I haven’t come off as a patronizing douche here, I just wanted to clarify what I think the problem with penguintruth’s argument is and why I think that the responses to the argument are inadequate. I think that it is an interesting point which was glossed over and deserves to be examined on its own terms. I do not in any way want this to seem like a personal attack, just a logical analysis of the points expressed at this point in the discussion.
[url=http://daizex.fanboyreview.net/viewtopic.php?t=9403] 12 years, 100 memories[/url]
[Former dub fan 1996-2008]