Aikin & Talisse write in 3 quarks-
Here’s a reasonable rule for critical discussion: all views for consideration should receive the same degree of scrutiny.
If a critical discussion has been mooted, the degree of scrutiny which permits it to exist should be related to the degree of scrutiny used. However this relationship may not be linear. A critical discussion facetiously entered in to may be yet more hilariously carried out with great 'akrebia' or precision.
A protocol bound discussion, however, should reject akrebia if the subject matter is incapable of precise treatment. This at any rate was Aristotle's recommendation.
Subjecting one account to a low level of critical evaluation, but another to a higher level, is not only unfair, but it clearly risks incorrect outcomes.
Not if there is an uncorrelated asymmetry- e.g. one guy is an acknowledged expert in the field while the other is a notorious crackpot. It is foolish to throw away relevant information. It is an example of vertical inequity- you are treating unlike cases- e.g. an expert vs. a crackpot- as if they were alike.
Suppose Aikin asked Talisse why he won't give a b.j to a homeless dude. Talisse's terse expression of dislike for the task should suffice to convince us the guy is not guilty of a racialist bias against the dude in question. Aikin's suggestion that it Talisse's bigotry which prevented him from performing fellatio should be dismissed. Why? Talisse knows more about himself than Aikin. He genuinely doesn't relish sucking bums off.
In retrospect, it is easy to see how such a shift can occur, especially when the claims on offer are controversial and when one sees some in the conversation as adversaries or allies. When a person we despise says something, we might even positively want them to be wrong. So, when they say something anodyne, like the sky is blue, we may be motivated to reply in the following fashion:
'Oh yeah? Well, sometimes, it’s red, purple, and yellow. That’s called sunset. And sometimes, it’s grey. That’s called overcast. Oh, and sometimes, it’s just black. That’s called night. Nice job overgeneralizing from sunny and cloudless days, you jerk.'
No we wouldn't. Either we look up and see the sky is blue and nod our heads or we say 'actually, the sky has just darkened. It looks like rain- worse luck'.
You get the picture. Yet when a friendly interlocutor offers up the sky is blue, we tend to treat it with the modest degree of scrutiny that it calls for – as a general statement, with many exceptions. No problem.
This is silly. If the sky is blue, it isn't going to rain. That's the sort of information which is quite useful to us.
One reason why the shift in critical scrutiny is hard to detect in situ is that it happens over time and with a background assumption about the exchange established in the process. This overall pattern we call the clearing the decks fallacy. Here’s how it unfolds. Step 1: Subject your opponents to the highest degree of scrutiny.
If this is done properly, then you gain useful information. The fact that you don't like the guy ceases to matter. There is no Step 2.
Step 2: Once it is clear that the opponent’s views cannot satisfy that degree of scrutiny, conclude that they are nonviable and unsalvageable.
How does this benefit you? If thinking about what the guy said aint useful, don't do it. Move away.
Step 3: Pronounce your own view, but in a way that assumes that the appropriate degree of scrutiny has greatly diminished (after all, the opposition has been refuted).
Fuck off! Why be dragged into a pointless argument? The other guy may have a strategic reason to get you to waste your time in this way. Don't fall in to his trap.
Step 4: If objections do appear, reply with a reminder of Step 2 – that the alternatives have been eliminated, so objections that must be based on their assumptions are undercut.
Why not just tell stupid lies or demand a b.j?
It’s a neat dialectical strategy: one clears the decks of one’s opposition by adopting an unforgiving critical stance, but then one proceeds as if those same standards are inappropriate when it comes time to articulate one’s own view.
Why bother? Just tell everybody that the other guy keeps sucking off homeless dudes.
In short, one applies demanding standards to clear the decks of one’s opposition, but then retracts those standards when presenting one’s own position once the opposition has been eliminated.
There are more effective ways of being a cunt.
Two features of the clearing the decks fallacy deserve emphasis.
There is no fallacy. These two fools made a mistake at Step 1. The highest degree of scrutiny you are capable of determines whether thinking about a thing is useful or useless to you. If it is useful, proceed alethically. If it isn't, fuck it.
Thus if a Medical Doctor, I don't like, says something about COVID treatment, I might google the thing (because I have no more 'critical' method of evaluating his claim) . If, as I suspected, he is talking bollocks, I may say so. But if I learn something useful, I have received a benefit. I may ask follow up questions so as to learn even more. This Doctor- who previously thought I was a fool- may change his opinion about me. He might say, 'I hear you are an Economist. What do you think of my portfolio strategy?'.
First, and most obviously, the fallacy involves an illicit shift in the standard of critical scrutiny that views are expected to meet; specifically, in committing the clearing the decks fallacy, one holds an opponent’s view to critical standards that one is unwilling to apply to one’s own view.
This is foolish. Suppose, my enemy, a Doctor, says something about COVID and I don't bother to google the thing (which is the highest standard of critical scrutiny I can apply). Instead I just say- 'Mahatma Gandhi said Doctors spread diseases. You have no true knowledge of curing anything. You are just a quack.'
Have I won the argument? To my mind, perhaps. But everybody thinks I'm a Gandhian crackpot. Then I fucking die of COVID.
On the other hand, if there is an information asymmetry between you and the other guy, you may well hold his statements regarding such matters with greater skepticism. But this is true of other uncorrelated asymmetries. I am likely to take assertions about COVID in India made by an Indian Doctor in India at face value while subjecting to intense scrutiny counter-intuitive claims by a Giorgio Agamben.
Second, the fallacy involves the meta-argumentative presumption that once an opponent’s view has been successfully criticized, they are rendered incapable of formulating legitimate criticisms of one’s view.
This is a non sequitur. The thing, quite literally, does not follow. A 'meta-argumentative presumption' has no higher standing than an ad hominem premise or just a hyper-argumentative fart in the face of the opponent.
Although the clearing the decks fallacy is similar to more familiar fallacies, it is a distinct kind of argumentative error.
It is shit these guys have pulled out of their asses.
For example, note that hasty generalizations do not need others in the discussion – you can hastily generalize all on your own. But clearing the decks can be committed only against an interlocutor.
That's a hasty generalization. An imaginary interlocutor may feature in which case the thing has happened without any interlocutor at all. This is also the reason the fact that you have had imaginary sex with She-Hulk doesn't mean you aren't a virgin. Sad.
It’s thus an error of critical dialogue, which implicates interlocutors, audiences, and time for the conversation to move between critical and constructive stages.
It's just worthless shit these guys pulled out of their ass is all it is.
Crucially, it’s also an error that occurs not simply when one reasons about things, but when one reasons about how others reason about things. It’s a meta-argumentative fallacy. Contrast this with, say, the fallacy of asserting the consequent, which one commits by simply in virtue of reasoning incorrectly about whatever first-order thing one reasons about (cats, Finland, big numbers, whatever). The clearing the decks fallacy involves an assessment of others and their reasoning about things.
But those others may be imaginary. These fools are asserting the consequent. They are treating something imaginary as real.
Back in the Thirties, an Indian philosophy student- Mulk Raj Anand- published a book of interviews with prominent British thinkers. The trouble was, the context made clear, these weren't real interlocutors at all. They were guys Anand had bumped into and pestered with questions while they hurriedly tried to get away.
The big problem with 'critical discussions' where one side is as stupid as shit is that the opponent that is being defeated is imaginary. There is no real interlocutor. There is just one crackpot talking bollocks while the other guy backs away making no sudden moves till he can get to the street and make a run for it.
In committing the clearing the decks fallacy, one evaluates one’s opponents, their reasons, and their views.
One does this when winning arguments against Einstein and that girl who wouldn't go out with you when you were 15. It's all in your head mate. Get help. Or just get a life.
Consequently, it’s a fallacy of meta-argumentation, an error one makes when one reasons about reasons and reasoning. It emerges because we argue about arguments. That makes it interesting in its own right, but because it’s a fallacy that happens when we reason about reasons, it’s an error that philosophers have a particular tendency to make.
So fuck philosophers. They are useless and stupid. Tell them they smell bad and maybe they'll go away.
The classical pragmatists routinely commit this fallacy.
No they don't. If an uncorrelated asymmetry exists then some information is available which endows greater epistemic value on some propositions, based on who made them or how they were made, as against other propositions. There is no flaw in reasoning where the information set is different and this causes the judgment to be different.
Typically, they hold non-naturalist, rationalist, and idealist programs to the highest degrees of critical scrutiny, but when it is time for pragmatist programs to be proposed, maximum charity is asked for the views on offer.
This is perfectly proper. I know what is useful to me. I may carefully scrutinize claims which are not obviously useful to me but, finding nothing of value, I am entitled to disregard them going forward.
The pragmatists explain they are merely experimentalists, so expectations must be appropriately lowered, as though experiments don’t deserve critical scrutiny.
But utility is 'noetic'. No 'dianoia' is required where the thing is immediately useful.
What’s more, the pragmatists only rarely circle back to consider objections proposed by opponents whose positive views have been dismissed.
I assert that Aikin & Talisse must go suck off homeless dudes otherwise the clearing the decks fallacy will fuck them in the ass. Why are Aikin & Talisse doing stuff they want to do instead of doing what I think they should do? What is the reason for this double standard?
In fact, non-naturalist and rationalist criticisms of pragmatism are treated as if they are no more than brute reaffirmations of non-naturalism and rationalism.
Aikin & Talisse must go suck off homeless dudes otherwise they are treating socioproctological criticisms of them as if they were no more than some other shite they don't like.
Thus, criticisms of pragmatism’s positive views are dismissed as instances of already rejected positions, such as “intellectualism” or “the spectator theory of knowledge.”
Not till everybody sees these two dudes sucking off the homeless with vim and vigor will 'the spectator theory of knowledge' get fair play.
It is difficult to square this stance with the pragmatist’s avowed experimentalism and fallibilism.
Unless you are actively sucking off smelly homeless dudes or aren't as stupid as shit and know about uncorrelated asymmetries.
The clearing the decks fallacy is not new, of course. In the history of philosophy, it can be seen with some regularity, once one is attuned to the pattern. The philosopher-poet Xenophanes famously held the model of the Olympian gods to severe scrutiny for moral and epistemological reasons, but when it was time for him to articulate his monotheistic alternative, he announced that we should “let these things be assented to, as resembling truth.” That is, after mercilessly debunking the competitor views, he asked for some tolerance for his incomplete account.
Nothing wrong in that. Xenophanes was saying he had a more focal solution to a discoordination game. The 'oikeiosis' peculiar to philosophers like himself made this plausible which is why we remember his name.
Aristotle held that diagnosing the errors of the alternatives to what he saw as obvious was “proof enough” for his views.
This was a case of 'economia' triumphing over 'akrebia'. The truth is Aristotle's Lyceum was useful enough. The proof of a Paideia lies in the fact that those who provide it get to eat pudding, not hemlock.
Epicureans famously held that once they’d shown skepticism was self-refuting, the skeptical challenges to their All Sensations are True principle were beside the point. All of these thinkers proceeded from the move of clearing the decks and then moving forward as though no legitimate alternative had standing.
This is because they had a notion of 'synoida' or noesis such that some things were known directly. It was part of oikeiosis. No further dianoia was necessary for its appropriation. The thing was an uncorrelated asymmetry. Philosophers had gained some quality or character trait that set them apart. This, by itself, might make them a target for a Tardean mimetic process. If not, at least your Daddy's money was buying you bragging rights re. having studied under a reputed savant.
To be clear, there are indeed cases where critical voices, once successfully rebuked, can subsequently be disregarded.
No. A successful rebuke is not the condition for disregarding a voice. You have to establish that you won't regret not heeding it at any time in the future. Currently, we can disregard Q-anon nutters. However, if their candidates start winning elections, we need to keep our ears open to hear what they are saying. At some point we may have to run away if we hope to return and fight another day.
And there are those who offer as criticisms of one’s position little more than the brute reaffirmation of their own. The clearing the decks fallacy has to do with the tendency to presume that once one dismantles the opposition’s positive views, they are thereby rendered impotent as critics.
Clear the decks by all means if it is regret minimizing to do so. But keep a wary eye out for changes in uncorrelated asymmetries. They decide outcomes. Of such is the regret minimizing bourgeois strategy. Anything else is the moral equivalent of sucking off homeless dudes by epistemic default. This is still shameful even if the spunk is imaginary.
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