--- David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b at dd-b.net> wrote: > Gregory Rapawy <grapawy at yahoo.com> writes: [...] >> I think that in certain areas of debate the strength >> of the participants' beliefs in certain emotional >> (or, perhaps, value) propositions is relevant to the >> truth they are seeking to ascertain. Examples >> include political philosophy, rhetoric, and >> aesthetics. > Well, for your particular benefit, I will disagree > *passionately* and *vehemently* with this position. > Maybe it'll help, who knows? It will certainly have the effect of keeping the two of us interested in the conversation, although this may not promote the common welfare if everyone else on the list gets bored. > To me, these are precisely the subjects that *must* > be considered rationally and not emotionally. What is the source of that obligation? >> First, in political philosophy, the strengths of our >> beliefs in certain propositions of value are, at >> least within some methodologies, the raw data from >> which we construct theories of the good or the >> right. [...] > Statistically, how strongly people feel about > something is relevant to policy certainly. I see > that as completely unrelated to the act of debate, > though. Probably the only way to approach this point is with specific examples. That is dangerous, because there is some chance of getting sidetracked onto the merits of the political issue, and to make the point well I need to use an issue about which people have strong feelings. Take abortion. Pro-Life (PL) claims that a fetus is a person, and that an abortion is the unjustified killing of a person, morally indistinguishable from murder even though our present unjust laws draw a legal distinction. Pro-Choice (PC) responds that a fetus is not a person, but only a potential person; that it lacks certain characteristics (for example, the ability to think) by which we define, or should define, a person. PL then counters that these characteristics are also not present in some recognized people, such as people with certain disabilities or diseases, so that PC's position on abortion if accepted implies that it is also acceptable to kill these people without other justification. I'll give PL the last word for the moment. PL and PC have begun with mutually contradictory positions -- to which, I think I can assume, they are passionately attached. The argument made by PL that I have sketched is an attempt to show that PC cannot simultaneously maintain his original position (that abortion is permissible) without either being logically inconsistent, or else also adopting another position that PC presumably finds unacceptable (that euthanasia of people with certain disabilities is permissible). PC's options are either to find a different reason that justifies abortion (or perhaps to state more precisely his originally given reason), to accept PL's original position that abortion is impermissble, to accept the second position that euthanasia as described is permissble, or to reject the obligation to give consistent reasons for his decisions. PL's argument has force only because most members of our society are passionately opposed to euthanasia. If PC is Peter Singer, who advocates euthanasia, PL will get nowhere -- except perhaps to convince some members of an audience who disagree with PC on the euthanasia point. Would you consider PL's arguments illegitimate? I'm not asking whether you consider them right or wrong; my personal sympathies are with PC. (I could give a parallel set in which PC argues that PL's position of protecting potential humans implies that birth control is impermissible -- which, of course, won't work if PL is also opposed to the use of contraceptives.) I am asking only whether you think they violate the obligation that "these . . . subjects . . . *must* be considered rationally and not emotionally." (Note that PL is *not* engaging in the fallacy of the slippery slope, in which one thing is asserted to follow after another without a justification for the sequence. PL is instead arguing that the reason PC gives to justify abortion here and now also justifies euthanasia.) >> Second, in rhetoric, the goal is to find the >> argument that the ultimate listeners (not the >> present companion with whom one is having the >> intellectual debate about rhetoric) will find >> persuasive, which will almost certainly depend on >> the strength of their beliefs in various >> propositions. [...] > Rhetoric is in direct opposition to intellectual > debate; rhetoric is the attempt to *convince* by > tactical trickery. Intellectual debate is the > attempt to *demonstrate* by *logic*. Thus the distinction I drew between ultimate listeners and present companion. That is, you (present companion) and I can discuss intellectually whether the crowd to whom I will speak tomorrow (ultimate listeners) will find one tactic or another persuasive. You can demonstrate to me logically that one tactic is persuasive, or another unpersuasive. Indeed, you do me a disservice if you *persuade* me that a certain tactic will be persuasive when in fact it will not. But in making your demonstration, you are likely to draw on our shared intuitions and emotions. You might draw on those we share with the crowd; or on those that you share with the crowd and I do not, or vice versa; or even on those that we share but the crowd does not. Each has its uses. [...] > If one attempts to make an axiomatic formal system of > aesthetics one could have intellectual debates with > it, but they'd have little to do with how anybody > liked a piece of art. I am, as I said, not a student of aesthetics. But have you really never had the experience of discussing intellectually whether a certain work of art was good or bad, and why? It doesn't require an axiomatic formal system. Nor is it wholly divorced from intuitions, feelings, and emotions. Rather, it is an attempt to make some sense of one's feelings, pro or con, by comparisons between different works of art, and an attempt to draw principles from one's impressions. Sometimes it may lead to a subjective reassessment of the work. ("Oh -- I hadn't thought of it that way. Maybe the artist *was* trying to do that. That's interesting.") -- Greg __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs http://www.hotjobs.com