Glen Sed:
On 01/06/2014 09:53 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
Speaking of shoddy reasoning, I wish somebody would give an example of
shoddy reasoning by a Right Winger that was NOT an example of reasoning from
false premises.
I don't think libertarians really qualify as "right wing". But some
people call them that. And I think libertarians tend to employ shoddy
reasoning from mostly true premises. The shoddiness of their reasoning
lies in it's closedness. In particular, they tend to follow only the
_canalized_ core of the reasoning and tend to ignore all the
"unintended" side effects. The reasoning tends to be a linear chain
rather than an expanding tree.
well articulated...
I suppose you might say that they're still starting with false premises
in the sense that their premises are insufficiently detailed (only true
as over-simplifications). But that would be parsing it too deeply, I
think. We all do that because none of us are capable of fully
delineating a concrete premise (indeed, I would argue that reality can
never be completely represented as rhetoric).
I certainly hope not (to your parenthetical), the map is not the
territory, the finger pointing skyward is not the moon, the model is
insufficient, by definition.
But the primary gestalt I get from talking to libertarians is this
inability to think about the variety of other consequences that obtain,
the consequences they don't want to or can't consider. If you need
particular examples, we can pull them from some of the most rational
seeming founders, how about this?
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wwjtd/2013/12/the-daily-show-interview-with-forbes-columnist-who-thinks-food-stamps-are-cruel/
Are his assumptions false? Or is his reasoning simply too simple?
Politics make strange bedfellows. I do know that of recent years, many
LIbertarians have joined with Tea Partiers or vice-versa, probably over
"small government" or "states rights" or
"personal-liberty-as-long-as-it-involves-a-gun" kinds of topics.
But Nick's question about Right-Winghers is still somewhat open. I
*have* had the experience of RWs using LWs willingness to accept various
premises for a discussion as the opportunity to do precisely what Nick
is describing... to not just start with false premises but to introduce
them along the way as-needed.
Since I'm confident that we have more than one Right-leaning member
here, I want to add, that this behaviour, in my opinion is only in
evidence in *some* who choose that label... just as "knee jerk" and
"bleeding heart" does not describe every Liberal/Progressive I know...
just enough that those labels are not entirely unmotivated.
- Steve
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