he never acquired' Jonathan Swift 1721

[GoodTaste]

Does "he never acquired' Jonathan Swift 1721" mean "he (Samuel Johnson) never achieved the good command of English like Jonathan Swift? It is a guess here because "acuqired" is defined as "to achieve native or nativelike command of (a language or a linguistic rule or element)."

This guess is rather wild to me.

==============
Steven Pinker (Harvard professor) retweeted:
There are hold-outs but 263 years later, political psychology is edging toward Samuel Johnson’s views:
“Credulity--confidence of opinion too great for the evidence from which opinion is derived--we find to be a general weakness imputed by
every sect and party to all others”(1758)



David Curran replied:

'Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired' Jonathan Swift 1721.

Source: https://twitter.com/PTetlock/status/1389307899411898391

 

[SoothingDave]

He's quoting Jonathan Swift. Note the quote marks.

The "he" is not Dr. Johnson. The Swift quote isn't about Johnson.

The "he" is the man (any person) who holds an opinion that he did not arrive at by reason.

 

[jutfrank]

You're misreading the punctuation.

David Curran's reply is a quotation by Jonathan Swift. The punctuation mark after acquired closes the quote.

[cross-posted]

 

[GoodTaste]

What does "correct" mean then? In its usual meaning "to make it right"? If so, it seems to me the two parts of the sentence 'Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired' appear to contradict each other to me:

A man never acquires an ill opinion by reason (it is what 'which by Reasoning he never acquired' means to me). And so reasoning would make him to correct an ill opinion. Thus, "Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion" is not understandable to me.

How should I understand it?

 

[jutfrank]

If you come to an opinion by any means other than through reason, there is no chance that reason will persuade you to change it.

So correct an ill Opinion, means something like 'change an irrational opinion to a rational one, by way of reason'.

It seems that Mr Curran, like Swift, is a rationalist in that he believes that if a thought is rational it must be 'correct'.

 

[probus]

If you come to an opinion by any means other than through reason, there is no chance that reason will persuade you to change it.

So correct an ill Opinion, means something like 'change an irrational opinion to a rational one, by way of reason'.

It seems that Mr Curran, like Swift, is a rationalist in that he believes that if a thought is rational it must be 'correct'.

I don't think that last part is quite fair to Curran and Swift. They held that reasoning could not change a person's opinion that was not arrived at by reasoning. We see this problem almost every day in current American political discourse. Although I can't read it myself because of encryption, apparently Lin Wood and his followers believe Joe Biden is dead and Donald Trump has reoccupied the White House. Quite evidently that opinion is not based on reason (what about Kamala Harris), and therefore it would be pointless to attempt to change it by reasoning.

 

[jutfrank]

What's not fair exactly? It's certainly true that Jonathan Swift was a rationalist.

Let's not stray into US politics, please.