Beer and Formal Logic
There is a rather slow-paced and artsy beer commercial out right now for Stella Artois beer. I actually find the beer quite nice, but the commercial drives me crazy. It shows someone hand-blowing and painting a glass for the beer, then passing it out to a bar where it is filled with delicious Stella Artois and handed to the obligatory beautiful woman, who meets the glassblower. If that were all there were to it, I’d have no problem, as product fantasies go it is certainly more restrained than the standard beer can pop top filling a pool with water and bikini-clad women, or making a train come out of a car tunnel or something.
But then they have to go an add the tagline “If this much care goes in to the Chalice, imagine what goes in to the beer”. Now, in logic terms, we can reformat this as “If this much care goes into the chalice, something like this much care goes into the beer.” Or “if x then y”, where x represents a great deal of care in making the chalice, and y represents a great deal of care in making the beer. And as well all know, in this formulation, if x is true, then so is y. But of course x isn’t true. Which means we have no way of knowing the state of y (at least they didn’t say “If and only if this much care goes in to the Chalice, imagine what goes in to the beer”, but still). The Stella Artois people, and their parent corporation InBev, have ruined the social contract of fantasy ads by making everything explicit. That is supposed to be subtext, dammit – once you straight up tell us that the fantasy will come true if we just buy your product we kind of know what’s happening. Just sell your beer, and leave the formal logic to others.