Sunday, May 2, 2010

"Idiots. Morality. Shit like that."...ad hominem, ignoratio elenchi, and inconsistent comparison

A friend of mine directed me to this facebook post because he felt the author, Anthony Hauser, was referring specifically to me. I am inclined to agree. However because I am not friends with Mr. Hauser I am unable to comment on his post to defend my position, therefor I will write here and also leave an open challenge to him for a public, formal, oral or written debate on this subject. I will also quote his post in full here so that he cannot accuse me of selective citation, I will however add my commentary throughout.

Mr. Hauser writes:
Recently, I have been "debating" idiots with no philosophical, theological, or even logical basis for any thought they have.

The "debate" he is referring to is another facebook post on Mr. Seth Fordham's wall from April 11, 2010 at 8:45 pm EST. Just another note he enters his monologue with ad hominem remarks about the people discussing these epistemic questions with. We must hope that Mr. Hauser will back up this universal negative with some documentation.

Mr. Hauser continues:
The one person claims to be God/Jesus...
And that the Second Coming was in 1992...
And don't get me started on how he avoids explaining Genesis 3, Genesis 6-9...
Or his literal-yet-metaphorical interpretation of Genesis 1-2. [Each day of creation was 7000 years, and he created on specific days but didn't create on them because he was like busy or something dealing with things that didn't exist at that time...]

This is quite interesting and I would agree that the person claiming to be God/Jesus hasn't the grounds for intelligibility, outside of what he borrows from true Christian belief, if that is indeed what they hold to. Also if the citation on genesis is accurate I would probably disagree with him on exegetical grounds. However this portion is not directly against me so this is all the commentary I will provide.

Going on Mr. Hauser seems to write of me: "Another claims that morality fails subjectively despite five different ways:" This is the part that specifically deals with me and the argument I put forth against how he can make any moral statement at all. My point was not that there are not ways to enforce morality, even subjective morality, but that he cannot give an account as to why anything is wrong. He in his 5 ways is answering how one might enforce morality but not why morality is necessary at all. The name for this in logic is Ignoratio Elenchi or missing the point. However for your sake I will examine each of his ways here and show you how each of them commit this common fallacy.

Mr: Hauser:
Economic -- Centrally, comparative advantage. Worst case, what's the benefit of your death by revenge? (Keeps saying that it's more beneficial to kill someone, and ignores the entire idea of revenge.)

Here we see that Mr. Hauser would like to enforce morality economically, that is one way of doing so, however this does not answer the question as to why it is more economic to be moral than not? Why is it wrong for the first man to kill? Only because then he will be killed in return. Yet wont this second killing invoke a revenge killing of its own, ad infinitum. Furthermore if the first killing is wrong why is it wrong? Why isn't the second?

Mr. Hauser:
Defensive -- Protection in numbers. (Has yet to challenge this one.)
Again Mr. Hauser shows a way of enforcing morality yet does not show why something is morally wrong. This view simply enters the logical fallacies of Argumentum ad Baculum and ad Populum. This is much like the argument a five year old makes on the playground "Everyone knows that Sesame Street is the best show on TV and if you don't agree my big brother and his friends will beat you up." While this may be a good way to enforce morality, it does not give a reason why something is moral and something else is not just as my above argument does not show why Sesame Street is better than any other show on TV.

Mr. Hauser:
Empathetic -- Do unto others. (He calls empathy an emotion as though it's a counter to this method of morality.)
What I said was why ought we do unto others? For what reason should we? It seems as though Mr. Hauser assumes that we should because we should, yet isn't that by definition Petitio Principii (begging the question)?

Mr. Hauser:
Selective -- Let the only competition be for food, sex, and safety.Animals follow this (for the most part) and have gotten along fine for a long time before us. (Didn't respond to this one.)

This does not give us morality, furthermore if we were to exist in such a world would rape be immoral? According to this definition no, because it would simply be competition for sex. Would murder, or holocaust be immoral? No, one could just say they were trying to keep themselves or their country, tribe, what have you safe. Rather than create or give us a morality this system, taken to its logical conclusions, seems to produce a completely amoral society where as long as I can define my immorality as competition for food, sex or safety then it is morally necessary for me to do so.

Mr. Hauser:
Clean hands -- Why get your hands dirty killing someone? Why even use the time for killing someone and not something more productive? (He says that it doesn't take time to kill people [despite all the planning, finding, stalking, killing, and cleaning], and that you don't need to clean the scene because illegal is not immoral...Keep in mind it was to this - tied to the Economic reason - I first brought in the 'your death by revenge' concept.)

How do you know that killing someone is not the most productive thing to do? Mr. Hauser would say something along the lines that it takes away from the number of people trying to help society. I must ask then if it would be wrong to kill a mass murderer, you are going to get your hands dirty by doing this. Let us take it down a notch, is it wrong to steal? Mr. Hauser would say yes, when asked why he would appeal to revenge, someone would kill you if you did, as he stated before. If such were the case then it would run into the same problems as the "Economic way."
Also if something being illegal means it is immoral as he seems to assert by including it in what he understood my rejection to be, then is it immoral to have more than one child? If Mr. Hauser were a citizen of the People's Republic of China then he would have to answer yes, yet as a citizen of the United States of America he must answer no. So it is moral of US citizens to have more than one child, but not for Chinese citizens, that is of course only if illegal means immoral.

Mr: Hauser
A third idiot got a simple math concept wrong. I explained his error, and he kept up not understanding. Now he claims that he accepted help and "understood it the first time", but deleted the posts in question that he put that showed the concept went over his head and he wasn't taking advice.
Even worse an act of stupidity, he told me to read the posts that he DELETED, as though he forgot that he deleted them. What did he have to hide from public view that he deletes a series of posts and claims as one of the first things he said what was actually one of the last things?

I am unsure of who this person is however if there is a simple math concept that he got wrong then there is no need for the rude remarks about him. I agree that one should leave things said in public open so there might be accountability one the part of all parties involved.

Mr. Hauser:
Now, I know that no one will read this section. Or at least don't plan on anyone reading this. So here it goes: I will answer any questions anyone has on what I think about them. Either in person, through text, or through Facebook/email. I will also deeply consider what you think about me, if you choose to let me know. This goes to everyone, because I value (almost) everyone's opinions.

Mr. Hauser, as I said in the opening paragraph of this post I would be willing to engage you in a discussion of debate on any of the subjects you mentioned either in the title of this post (Morality) or in the opening line (Basis for Intelligent Thought). Get back to me if you feel that such an exchange would be profitable.

Grace and peace
Proverbs 18:17; 26:4-5

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The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. - The Apostle Paul