{"id":29204,"date":"2016-03-04T01:00:25","date_gmt":"2016-03-04T06:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=29204"},"modified":"2016-02-24T12:47:45","modified_gmt":"2016-02-24T17:47:45","slug":"qotd-arguments-by-the-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/03\/04\/qotd-arguments-by-the-book\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Arguments, by the book"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>When everything works the way it\u2019s supposed to in philosophy textbooks, arguments are supposed to go one of a couple of ways:<\/p>\n<p>1. Questions of empirical fact, like \u201cIs the Earth getting warmer?\u201d or \u201cDid aliens build the pyramids?\u201d. You debate these by presenting factual evidence, like \u201cAn average of global weather station measurements show 2014 is the hottest year on record\u201d or \u201cOne of the bricks at Giza says \u2018Made In Tau Ceti V\u2019 on the bottom.\u201d Then people try to refute these facts or present facts of their own.<\/p>\n<p>2. Questions of morality, like \u201cIs it wrong to abort children?\u201d or \u201cShould you refrain from downloading music you have not paid for?\u201d You can only debate these well if you\u2019ve already agreed upon a moral framework, like a particular version of natural law or consequentialism. But you can sort of debate them by comparing to examples of agreed-upon moral questions and trying to maintain consistency. For example, \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t kill a one day old baby, so how is a nine month old fetus different?\u201d or \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t download a car.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If you are very lucky, your philosophy textbook will also admit the existence of:<\/p>\n<p>3. Questions of policy, like \u201cWe should raise the minimum wage\u201d or \u201cWe should bomb Foreignistan\u201d. These are combinations of competing factual claims and competing values. For example, the minimum wage might hinge on factual claims like \u201cRaising the minimum wage would increase unemployment\u201d or \u201cIt is very difficult to live on the minimum wage nowadays, and many poor families cannot afford food.\u201d But it might also hinge on value claims like \u201cCorporations owe it to their workers to pay a living wage,\u201d or \u201cIt is more important that the poorest be protected than that the economy be strong.\u201d Bombing Foreignistan might depend on factual claims like \u201cThe Foreignistanis are harboring terrorists\u201d, and on value claims like \u201cThe safety of our people is worth the risk of collateral damage.\u201d If you can resolve all of these factual and value claims, you should be able to agree on questions of policy.<\/p>\n<p>Scott Alexander, <a href=\"http:\/\/slatestarcodex.com\/2014\/11\/04\/ethnic-tension-and-meaningless-arguments\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Ethnic Tension And Meaningless Arguments&#8221;, <em>Slate Star Codex<\/em><\/a>, 2014-11-04.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When everything works the way it\u2019s supposed to in philosophy textbooks, arguments are supposed to go one of a couple of ways: 1. Questions of empirical fact, like \u201cIs the Earth getting warmer?\u201d or \u201cDid aliens build the pyramids?\u201d. You debate these by presenting factual evidence, like \u201cAn average of global weather station measurements show [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,73],"tags":[576],"class_list":["post-29204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quotations","category-randomness","tag-philosophy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7B2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29204"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29205,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29204\/revisions\/29205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}