jLffLculty of establLshing motherhood. From 
paternity suits, we know that genetic evi-
dence of fatherhood is imprecise; I presume, 
however, that such. evidence is no more pre-
cise in establishing motherhood. So once 
the chLld is born it may be as hard to dis-
cover the female parent as the male. Still, 
the father's role in having a chLld is com-
paratively brief and private, thus easier to 
conceal. aut if mothers tried to conceal 
their pregnancies (and surely fear of forced 
sterilLzation would be a powerful motive) it 
would require as invidious a trespass of 
privacy to establish motherhood as it does to 
establish fatherhood. aLology does not set-
tle the issue. 

OojectLons to D. and E. lumped together. 
I have two main objections here: a right 

to have children ein the relevant sense) 
implies nothing about ownershLp of children 
and, even if the ownership Lssue is germane, 
Hardin's reasons for deny~ parent's owner-
ship are off the mark. 

To the second point first; I grant that 
parents do not own their children but this is 
not because of the proportLon of costs paid 
by the state. Undertaking maintenance pay-
ments'does not make one a part-owner. For 
example, if I neglLgently smash into your 
car, r could end up paying a larger portion 
than you of the total maintenance costs of 
your auto; that does not make the car any 
less yours. (Note, by the way, the ambiguity 
of statement 12a.-"an ever larger share": 
than what the state used to pay? than what 
parents pay? .. ) Nor can ownership be bio-
logically determined; it is a matter of 
property rights and thus a social construct. 
It is wrong to suppose that parents own chil-
dren because people--including young people 
--are not the sorts of things that are owned. 

NOW, is ownership relevant? Before turning 
to that question, we need to shed some light 
on the right to have children. Two inter-
pretations come to mind: first, a right to 
conceive and bear children and second, a 
right to raise the new being one brings into 
the world. (It is sad to note we often think 
of fathering in the fust sense and mothering, 
always, in the second sense of having chil-
dren.) OWnership, if relevant at all, is 
relevant to the right to raise children and 
not the right to conceive them. On the other 
hand, objections to forced sterilization are 
based on a right to conceive, or at least a 
righ.t to be free from intruaLona on one' a 
body. Forced sterilization after n chLldren 
(where £. is. greater than OJ hardly-even con-
flicts with. a.right to raise one's natural 
children. Hence the relevant sense of a 
right to have children does not depend upon 
parents owning theLr chLldren. 

Summation 
Hardiri here is, as always, provocative but 

that may be the only virtue of this passage. 
His proposal is hard-hearted and his argument 
sterile; he makes sexist assumptions, he in-
troduces a new fallacy, he ignores relevant 
distinctions and he begs crucial questions. ~ 

16 

chestnuts 
& 

paradigms 

Has C. L. Hamblin, in Fallacies, cornered 
the market in venerable examples of falla-
cies? He certainly has located a warehouse 
full, out we. are not convinced that there are 
no more to be found. As evidence, we pass on 
an example sent to the ILN by Robert W. 
ainkley of the University of western Ontario 
(And editor of the London Close Reasoner--
see !LN, ii/Supplement; pp:-5!!-s28), who 
wrote:- "I came across the enclosed argument 
of Horace's concerning the veneration of 
ancient authors • . •• It is an example of 
Sorites or (~y some definitions) SliPpe~ 
slop~. Perhaps U migh.t qualify as a c est-
nut. 

With. Horace's Sorites we initiate a column 
(suggested by Professor ainkley) which will 
appear from time to time in the ILN--as fre-
quently as readers send in items~r publica-
tion. To give access to thLs column to 
readers. who are not antiquarians, we propose 
to twin with chestnuts examples of paradigms 
of given fallacies. ay a paradigm example 
we have in mind one that fits this character-
ization: "If there ever was an example of 
Ad Hominem {or whatever fallacy] this is it." 
SOmetimes--and this issue's exampIe:rrom 
Horace may be one of those--a chestnut will 
also be a paradigm. 

Horace's Sorites 
If poems are like wine which time 

improves, I should like to know what 
is the year that gives to writings 
fresh value. A writer who dropped 
off a hundred years ago, is he to be 
reckoned among the perfect and ancient, 
or among the worthless and modern? 
Let some limit banish disputes. "He 
is ancient," you say, "and good, who 
completes a hundred years." "What of 
one who passed away a month or a year 
short of that, in what class is he to 
be reckoned? The ancient poets, or 
tho's·e whom to-day and to-morrow mus t 
treat with scorn? "He surely will 
find a place of honour among the an-
cients, who is short by a brief month 
or even a whole year. II I take what you 
allow, and like hairs in a horse's 
tail, first one and then another I 



pluck and pull away little by little, 
till, after the fashion of the falling 
heap, he is baffled and thrown down, 
who looks back upon the annals, and 
values worth by years, and admires 
nothing but what the goddess ot 
funerals has hallowed. 
--Epistles, II. 1. 34-49. Taken from, 

Horace, Satires, Epistles and Ars 
Poetica, Wl.t:h: an EngliibO transla-
tl.on oy H. Rushton Fairclough 
(London: William Heinemann Ltd; 
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 19661, pp. 399-401. 

To the phrase, "after the fashion of the 
falling heap," Professor Fairclough appends 
this footnote: 

Horace makes use of the log~cal 
puzzle known as sorites (~~PO~, 
a heap). How many grains of sand 
make a heap or pile? The addition 
of no one grain will make that a 
heap which waS not a heap before. 
He also seems to have asked how 
many hairs make a tail. See Plutarch's 
story of the two horses in his 
Sertorius. (Ibid., p. 400.) 

Professor Binkley very kindly also supplied 
the passage from Plutarch. referred to here: 

So after a few days he called a 
general assembly and introduced 
before it two horses, one utterly 
weak and already quite old, the 
other large-sized and strong, with 
a tail that was astonishing for the 
thickness and beauty of its hair. By 
the side of the feeble horse stood a 
man who was tall and robust, and by 
the side of the powerful horse another 
man, small and of a contemptible 
appearance. At a signal given them, 
the strong man seized the tail of his 
horse with both hands and tried to 
pull it towards him with all his 
might, as though he would tear it off; 
but the weak man began to pluck out 
the hairs in the tail of the strong 
horse one by one. The strong man gave 
himself no end of trouble to no pur-
pose, made the spectators laugh a 
good deal, and then gave up his at-
tempt; but the weak man, in a trice 
and with no trouble, stripped his 
horse's tail of its hair. Then 
Sertorius rose up and said: trYe see, 
men of my allies, that perseverance 
is more efficacious than violence, 
and that many things which cannot be 
mastered when they stand together 
yield when one masters them little 
by little •.•. 
--sertorius, XVI. Taken from Plutarch's 

Lives, with an English translatl.on 
by Bernadotte Perrin, Vol. VIII 
(London: William Heinemann Ltd; 
Camliridge, Mass.; Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1949), pp. 41-42. ~ 

17 

announce-
ments 
"The NEnor Logic Course" Program: 
APA western Division 

The Western Conference on the Teaching of 
Philosophy solicits papers on teaching infor-
mal logic and practical reasoning for its 
program "The New Logic Course" to be pre-
.~ented at the APA Western Division meetings 
l.n Milwaukee, April 23-25, 1981. Selected 
papers will be published in Teaching Philoso-
phy and will vie for a $200 prize. The dead-
Irne for receipt of papers is 15 December. 
Papers and queries should be addressed to 
Prof. Arnold Wilson, University College 206, 
University of Cincinnati; Cincinnati, Ohio 
45221. '0 

TEACHING PHILOSOPHY 

Beginning in 1981 Teaching/h.iloaOPh¥ will 
be published quarterly. S crl.ption rates 
are US$12 for individuals, US$2Q for all 
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UniverSity, Bowling Green, Ohio 43403, USA. ~ 

Australian Logic Teachers' Journal. 

The Australian Logic Teacher~Journal is 
now appearIng In a new, upgraded format. The 
8 1/2" x 11" mimeographed format that was 
used up to the February 1979 issue (Vol. III, 
No.2) was: replaced by the 5 3/4" x 8" 
<.14.5 em x 20.5 em) typeset format of the 
Auguat 1979 issue (Vol. IV, No. 11. 

The ALTJ, still edited by R. A. GLrle and 
T. A. Halpin, now has an editorial board