Arguing for the sake of arguing

So I decided to look over an old post over at InformationisBeautiful.net (this post) and I found this comment:

The arguments both for and against same-sex marriage are not logical arguments. Logical arguments should work from a fixed and common set of axioms and be independently verifiable, but the arguments for and against same-sex marriage are based on very variable moral judgements and values.

Wait, what?

So let me get this straight: neither side in the gay marriage debate is basing their argument on logic, only relativistic values.

In that case, there is no reason why gay marriage should or should not be allowed based solely on the number of people who happen to believe either position, i.e. sheer majority will. There is no real reason beyond the collective whims of everyone; there is no righteousness in the struggle of gays to have their relationships recognized as marriage, because 'righteousness' is a function of moral axioms, and there are no moral axioms.

I'm glad that's straightened out.

Sarcasm aside, let's break down this statement to see what's wrong with it.

Logical arguments should work from a fixed and common set of axioms and be independently verifiable.

Assuming that the word 'axiom' means what I think it means, e.g. a premise which can definitively known to be true, then so far so good. Moving on, however...

...the arguments for and against same-sex marriage are based on very variable moral judgements and values.

And here is where the trouble begins. First off, this is yet another example of presuming the truth of premises that are left undefended, because they are thought to be clearly true by reasonable people... Except they aren't, and that's why we keep having arguments about things like gay marriage or other such things.

Secondly, this statement presumes that there is some kind of separation between "logic" and "rhetoric", as if they are different species. On the contrary, there is indeed such a thing as "rhetorical logic". In the Middle Ages, the distinction was made between the "demonstrative" argument, which relied purely on syllogisms (e.g. If A is true, then B must follow) and the "rhetorical" argument, which was probabilistic (e.g. Given that A, B, and C are reasonable courses of action, I submit that B is the best, because X). The latter is the common technique used in politics, and can be perfectly valid arguments despite not being purely "logical".

I think the trouble here is that there seem to be different working definitions of what logic is in the first place. It seems that the commenter believes that what counts as "logic" would produce a proposition that cannot be denied by anyone. This is strict to an unfounded degree. There is no such thing as an argument or proposition that can compel a person to believe it beyond their capacity to deny it. People are fickle and can deny whatever they want, and even if they are open to argumentation it takes some time for someone to truly absorb, understand, and (possibly) adopt a correct argument. People have to consciously choose to accept even a totally sound proposition or argument; that is just a fact of life.

As to what the actual premises at stake are in the gay marriage debate, that will have to wait for now. I merely wanted to point out that even our ideas about what arguments are seem to, sadly, vary wildly between different people.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"

I was thinking about that famous saying of Carl Sagan's. It didn't take me long to realize that...well, what the hell is that supposed to mean?

"Extraordinary claims." What makes a claim extraordinary? I'm guessing that's supposed to refer to claims about the supernatural or God, but to call such claims 'extraordinary' is to take for granted the assumption the only the physical is real, and that therefore anything that suggests otherwise must be considered 'extraordinary'. So, why is only the physical real?

"Extraordinary evidence." This is where things get out of whack. If the evidence for an 'extraordinary' claim is also 'extraordinary', then how is one supposed to obtain any such evidence? How you know what counts as 'extraordinary evidence' if the claim itself is subject to suspicion in the first place?

Now, granted, the statement itself isn't necessarily /bad/ per se, it only presumes a number of premises that may or may not be true. Sadly, it seems a lot of people aren't even aware that there are premises to be held beforehand; the statement becomes a bald assertion masquerading as an argument.

A New Definition

The Western: that peculiarly American genre in which lawlessness breeds high adventure and guns are magical weapons that can shoot flipped coins out of the air.

Random eschatological thought

Contrary to what Aquinas states, I think that there will, in fact, be food in Heaven, simply not the kind of food we are used to. After all, the risen Lord, I assume, did not dine with the disciples merely to show that he was not a ghost; he was demonstrating a real fact about what it is like to be resurrected. The supernatural effusion of divine grace into the resurrected body does not destroy the old, regular human nature but builds upon it.

As to the nature of this heavenly food, one can only speculate since we are dealing not with nature but with super-nature. The closest thing that comes to mind, of course, is the Eucharist, but since the presence of the Deity would be supremely effusive into everything in the New Heaven and Earth one might wonder if the Eucharist would be even necessary.

Or maybe it is, sort of? After all the whole point of divine grace is that it is wholly 'unnecessary' and gratuitous (the word 'gratuitous', of course, coming from the Latin gratic meaning, among other things, 'gift'). Maybe some kind of super-Eucharist or super-elf bread is the food of the blessed (and they don't have to worry about going to the bathroom, either, I would think), since the total union of the person to God, physically and spiritually, is the chief characteristic of living in Paradise, and consumption (but not digestion!) of the Deity is, I venture, a particularly intimate sort of physical union. Kinda gives a new meaning to those old Philly cheese commercials about having 'a little taste of Heaven in your mouth'.

Murder Death Kill

Wow new post after a year!

Right, so I was involved in this conversation about the nature of murder for some reason. What the other guy(s) were arguing was that, because the law defines 'murder' as the deliberate killing of another human being, therefore all killing of humans was murder, including executions and warfighting, except that two latter two happen to be lega kinds of murder.

I thought that this was a highly facile and, well, stupid argument, but I'm not exactly the best debater, so my attempts to argue to the contrary came out as a bunch of bwahahrghar and stuff.

Thankfully I've thought about it for a while now so I can provide what I think is a reasonably sound argument as to why 1) Not all killings are murders, 2) Some killings are justified, if regretable.

 What is murder?

When one defines "murder" as the deliberate killing of another human being, one is only partly right. Why is this killing forbidden and not others, like capital punishment? It all has to do with purpose and rights.

Purpose and rights

There are two major concepts at stake here: the natural rights of individual human beings and the common good. When a murder is committed it is because the former has been violated for no other reason than the will of the murderer; he kills another because of some private quarrel, or for money, or for some other advantage that the death of that person is seen to bring. He is doing it for himself, and therefore he is imposing his own will against the natural right of another person to be alive.

But what about executions, which some cynics/hippies regard as "state-sanctioned murder"? This is a totally different matter. The reason why the state makes laws that allow the killing of some criminals is to preserve the common good. That is, the person poses such a threat to the security of the whole community that it is better that he perish than be allowed to live. This is a very loose argument for capital punishment, but the point is clear: the state is allowed, in certain very limited circumstances, to execute criminals for the common good of the society which it governs.

War is similar. In a just war, a state sends its soldiers to fight and defeat the enemy in order to protect not only itself but also the people; war is the ultimate action in which the common good, directly threatened, is preserved. Inevitably, fighting will involve killing, but as long as a reasonable level of force is applied (which is another argument entirely) then the killings are justified because the survival of the state and of the common good is at stake.

All of this is akin to the idea that one has a right to self-defence even until the point of killing the aggressor. Just as a person as a right to preserve his life, so the state has a right to preserve the welfare and integrity of the community/nation.

In all these cases, the common good, in a sense, "overrides" the natural rights of individuals to live. There are very important caveats, of course, for not even the community/state can demand absolute rights, but the purpose of this missive has been merely to lay out a basic argument regarding the distinction between the different kinds of killing, legal and illegal.

Oh hey this exists!

Maybe I should use it again!

(more posts coming soon, promise)

"Skeptics" who act like skeptics!

They do exist! A refreshing example courtesy of a commenter at Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog:

First let me say that climate change is absolutely real, that’s not what I’m ranting about.

I get a little annoyed at the so called skepticism of organized skeptics. Most of the people that post here are skeptical only about religion, an area that is easy to be skeptical about and that really doesn’t matter much. It is pretty much immune to the skepticism of others, as are most of it’s adherents. As for all the attacks on the anti-vax clowns, that’s not skepticism, that’s just common sense attacking idiots for fun. Ranting about that here does nothing as none of them are reading this, or really any other intelligent blog.

Let’s apply skepticism where it belongs. Science. Science is skepticism, or at least it’s supposed to be. In the case of this report, like everything in science, it should be looked at skeptically. Certainly the global climate is changing, and certainly it is in some large part driven by human activity. there’s really no doubt about that. However, there is still a lot of room for skepticism.

He then goes on to apply this principle to the topic of discussion, namely global warming/climate change, by pointing out how the uncertainties of climate science should leave us room for pause as opposed to the hyper-active panic promoted by our sound-bite media culture. Instead of automatically painting the entire "denier" side as a bunch of jibber-jibber right-wing nuts, maybe you should consider that actual scientists have also been having doubts about the "consensus" for some time now.

It's easy to say that you're skeptical about this or that thing that you've concluded is wrong, but how did you come to that conclusion in the first place? Did you actually thinking it over or did you come to that position from social pressure? The most important kind of skepticism, I believe, is self-skepticism, is asking yourself "Am I really right or did I make a mistake somewhere?" Humility, unfortunately, is a hard virtue to cultivate especially if you happen to be even moderately intellectual. As another commenter notes:

I’ve been beating that drum for years WRT ideology, Vince. You won’t get far. I’m one of the few people I know who also applies skepticism to politics. It’s why I don’t hang with many other skeptics. Too many of them have gobbled up one ideology or another to the point of nearly cultist-like responses if you dare question them.

And so it is with many so-called "skeptics" or "free-thinkers", who supposedly adhere only to their own reason but in reality use these as cover to unabashedly advocate highly partisan positions, or make fun of religion (often times both). That's not skepticism; that's not even reason. That's just tribalism with a lab coat.

Of course, these two guys are pretty much ignored for the rest of the thread. Sad, but expected.