WJM Sums it up Nicely

_{Barry Arrington
November 18, 2013

Intelligent Design

1}_{Categories
Intelligent Design}

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We’re telling you [i.e., materialists] what the logical ramifications of your premises are, not what your beliefs are. In other words, if you hold premise A, then you must rationally also commit to B. That doesn’t mean you actually believe B; it just means that if you do not, you’re being logically inconsistent with regards to your stated premise. We’re actually, for the most part, assuming you do not believe B, even though it is logically implied by your premise.

It’s our hope that once you realize that B is logically [implied by] your premise, you’ll question your premise.

Comments

WJM asks, "Is there a reason we must suffer through Alan Fox’s trolling?" A good question that deserves an answer. I actually value Alan's contributions. As I said in my last post, I suspect he is really a fundamentalist Christian shilling as a materialist, a sort of agent provocateur if you will. I do admit that sometimes he lays it on a little thick. Hey Alan, here's a clue. Some things are just too outrageous even for a materialist. Tone it down a little and you will be more believable in your role as materialist internet troll.Barry Arrington_{November 18, 2013
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PHV: The whole blog is not to be taken seriously. Barry likes to get worked up, then ban anyone who disagrees with him ... hardly a polite way to behave. I agree the more nuanced examples are more illuminating, but dont hold your breath.Graham2_{November 18, 2013
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Graham, That's one reason why people use hypos like this, or the Holocaust. It makes people who are trying to disagree with you uncomfortable if you make them feel that disagreeing with you means associating yourself with some unacceptable outcome. Think about WJM's original post--if you're a relativist, you're on the side of NAZIS! Sensationalist or "gotcha" hypos are bad hypos. Bad facts make bad law. It's also a bad hypo because it doesn't prove anything. If everyone agrees with the principle, is it because it's self-evident or because it's so egregious that everyone would agree? When you take an extreme, egregious hypo like that, you're not covering boundary cases. I think it's more useful to use hypos that cover cases where people disagree over what might be a "self-evident" moral principle. I'm not crazy about the gay rights example, even though it might otherwise fit the bill, because it's going to come across as an attack. I'm open to more neutral suggestions, but in another thread I used this hypo, based on a real-life case: A policeman sees you carrying a firearm in public. You are 100% certain that this is legal (you've studied the law in detail) and appropriate (you're walking from a parking spot to a shooting range a block away). The officer tells you that you aren't allowed to have the weapon in public, and tries to put you under arrest. The officer's authority is legitimate--he's a real officer. But you're certain that he's abusing his power. Whether or not it's a good idea, is it self-evidently morally wrong to resist arrest? (I like this hypo because it's less aggressive, and comes from a real-world case that has divided many people regardless of their position on the Second Amendment. We could use lots of others, or more complex ones. All I'm trying to get at is a case in which real people would disagree civilly.)Pro Hac Vice_{November 18, 2013
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Alan Fox:
Ah, just the man, KF. You’re a homophobe, like Barry. How do you justify your homophobia. Is it based on self-evident moral principles?
Let's go ahead and put it on the record. Alan Fox thinks it is a good and wholesome thing for a grown man to use his lower digestive tract as a sex organ.StephenB_{November 18, 2013
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Is there a reason we must suffer through Alan Fox's trolling?William J Murray_{November 18, 2013
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What I’m not seeing is the rational connection between A and B, where A is “there are no objective standards” and B seems to mean, “therefore you can’t prefer your morals to someone else’s.”
Your B is a straw man. Mere personal preference is not being challenged as something one would need to rationally justify. Feeling obligated and authorized to act, and then intervening in the private affairs of others in defiance of law, social mores, and putting one's own safety at risk is what requires rational justification. "Because I felt like it" is not a rational justification.
Again, no one actually believes the thing WJM says is logically necessary. That might be because every single MR is an insane liar. It might be because WJM is wrong. I know which one I think is more likely.
I believe it is logically necessary, and so do others here, so that claim is patently false. Also, the options are not "WJM is wrong" or "MRs are insane liars". MRs could simply have beliefs that are not logically reconcilable with their premises, as I've already pointed out is the likely case.William J Murray_{November 18, 2013
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'Music – Inspirational: Landfill Harmonic- The world sends us garbage… We send back music. – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXynrsrTKbI' Winding them up again, Phil?! Music to deride with!Axel_{November 18, 2013
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Pro Hac Vice, as to 'flawed assumptions', that one flawed assumption gumming up the whole works would be the atheistic naturalism-materialism assumption on your part! And your primary assumption is flawed in a big way in that it is now refuted scientifically! Care to see the empirical evidence? :) Music – Inspirational: Landfill Harmonic- The world sends us garbage… We send back music. – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXynrsrTKbIbornagain77_{November 18, 2013
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Alan Fox:
Ah, just the man, KF. You’re a homophobe, like Barry. You're a liar. You don't have an argument so you yell HOMOPHOBE!
Mung_{November 18, 2013
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KairosFocus @10 This time you have gone too far. (1) Your comments suggest a physically violent response. If they arent removed by the moderator, and if you dont give an apology, then it clearly demonstrates a deplorable standard of behaviour that is tolerated at UD. (2) The hypothetical case raised (infant etc) was first raised by your own Barry Arrington in the previous OP (See #52). It has also been frequently used by UD associates in the past, in the tediously frequent rehashing of this subject. (3) You cant expect every contributor to have an intimate knowledge of all the personal travails of all the UD associates. Eg, I dont know who 'X' is and I dont know the details of what you are referring to. I suspect Mark Frank is also innocent.Graham2_{November 18, 2013
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Ah, just the man, KF. You're a homophobe, like Barry. How do you justify your homophobia. Is it based on self-evident moral principles?Alan Fox_{November 18, 2013
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I wonder if there is a parallel between the development of law and the development of morals. I remember as a law student that there is one school of thought that saw the law as something objective that already existed that judges simply uncovered or discovered when they made decisions. Of course this is nonsense, but it's a nice fiction. It gives the aura of objectivity to a judgment rather than it just being one judges opinion of what the law is/should be.5for_{November 18, 2013
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EF:
‘What absurdity results from holding it is not evil to torture an infant for personal pleasure?’
Don't try that cute rhetorical trick in the presence of X, who lost his young son [about 8 YO] in much that way. Not if you value your mouth, teeth, nose and the like. For good reason. KFkairosfocus_{November 18, 2013
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Perhaps, the term, 'folk knowledge', would be more apposite than 'anecdotal knowledge'.Axel_{November 18, 2013
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Sorry, AGAIN! I should have been addressing Mark, not Alan.Axel_{November 18, 2013
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'understanding something to be self-evident is, by its very nature, anecdotal,' would be less clumsily expressed as: 'self-evident knowledge is, by its very nature, anecdotal'.Axel_{November 18, 2013
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'What absurdity results from holding it is not evil to torture an infant for personal pleasure?' May I interject, Broadway Danny Rose-style? Alan, just as the multiverse renders science, indeed, ratiocination of any kind, futile, in the same way, in the moral order, not to consider torturing an infant for personal pleasure evil, renders any meaning of morality AS CUSTOMARILY UNDERSTOOD BY 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999% of mankind completely void, nullifies it, annihilates it. You have to understand that understanding something to be self-evident is, by its very nature, anecdotal. And guess what? It is, to the enormous credit of anecdotal knowledge, that it is not dumb distortable data of the kind that pedestrian scientism, whose cult-followers refuse to acknowledge the primacy of mind over matter, aggrandizes, as a child does the less than deafening reports of his cap-gun.Axel_{November 18, 2013
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What I’m not seeing is the rational connection between A and B
I think Barry quote-mined Murray, omitting the context. Thank you, Pro Hac Vice, for supplying the relevant information. :) I propose some concrete examples so we can be clearer about what Barry is getting at. Barry is opposed to homosexuals (and presumably lesbians) having equality under the law, regarding marriage and property rights. Is this a self-evident truth. I say of course not. It's merely Barry's prejudice and unfair to gay people. They have (or should have) exactly the same rights as anyone else.Alan Fox_{November 18, 2013
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Barry - for the third time of asking in the last few hours. You say that you can tell if something is self-evidently true because denying it results in absurdity. You also hold that it is self-evidently true that it is evil to torture an infant for personal pleasure. What absurdity results from holding it is not evil to torture an infant for personal pleasure?Mark Frank_{November 18, 2013
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BA77, unfortunately "fiat" is a byword for "unpersuasive argument" in any context in which people disagree. Those statements aren't logical necessities, they are convenient but flawed assumptions upon which he's trying to build a logical argument. That argument fails because the assumptions are flawed.Pro Hac Vice_{November 18, 2013
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What I'm not seeing is the rational connection between A and B, where A is "there are no objective standards" and B seems to mean, "therefore you can't prefer your morals to someone else's." It's almost tautologically wrong. If I agreed with someone eles's standards, wouldn't I adopt them? I haven't because I think mine are better. So in some cases, if I'm called upon to act on my beliefs, I'll act on mine rather than his or the strange assumption that all beliefs are equal. Again, no one actually believes the thing WJM says is logically necessary. That might be because every single MR is an insane liar. It might be because WJM is wrong. I know which one I think is more likely.Pro Hac Vice_{November 18, 2013
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WJM does have a gift for clarity from time to time that is directly to the point, for instance:
“If you do not assume the law of non-contradiction, you have nothing to argue about. If you do not assume the principles of sound reason, you have nothing to argue with. If you do not assume libertarian free will, you have no one to argue against. If you do not assume morality to be an objective commodity, you have no reason to argue in the first place.” - William J Murray
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