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July 6, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
45:02
316 Bitchy Arguments

Coaching with a club - the infinite insults of the unimaginably superior...

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Good morning, everybody.
July the 6th, 2006.
Here is the podcast wherein I lose an enormous amount of credibility with certain kinds of people.
So I hope that you enjoy it.
I got an email last night which was sent on by a reader, a listener rather, and I guess a listener slash reader.
And he's talking about an email that his brother sent to him after he had a discussion back in April.
And the debate that was going on on the boards at that time, which was something like, well, if force is immoral, the initiation of force is immoral.
Then what if you see somebody who's about to take a pill which will kill him, a suicide pill?
Are you allowed to use force to intervene in that?
And my position on that in general, just in case you're curious, is, you know, hey, take your chances.
You know, if you have the right to do whatever you want and the other person has the right to retaliate.
So if somebody's trying to kill themselves by taking a pill and you want to use force to intervene, I say, you know, go for it.
You can do whatever you want.
And if that person then wakes up later and says, why, thank you so much, I'm so glad you saved my life, then good for you.
But if that person then wakes up and says, well, I really wanted to die and you punched me to stop me taking my pill, I'm going to sue you for aggression, for assault, then that's their right as well.
So I just don't see how it's that big an issue.
Plus, I do get impatient with these ridiculous scenarios that no one's ever going to run into because, of course, we do have a state veering towards collapse.
We have war.
We have billions of people enslaved under the guns of the thugs of the military.
And it just seems to me worrying about these kinds of situations is kind of ridiculous.
It is very much looking for the hangnail victim in a time of desperate plague.
But anyway, so he says, I find a philosophy, this is this guy's brother, in which it is immoral to save the pill taker's life, which is in reality what he desires, to contradict my intuitive understanding of good and evil.
I think it violated yours too because you suggested the friend of the pill taker might still be acting morally since he knew the pill taker's true desires and thus wasn't actually committing coercion.
This is a position Molyneux does not take.
That would be me. Apparently, the expressed will of a person is the only thing to be considered.
I say that because in another article, it seems he would deny that it is possible for someone to know another's desire is better than the other, or at least the state can't.
Well, yeah, absolutely, I stand by that.
If the state knew what my desires were, I wouldn't be getting my tax bills.
It is a matter that I think requires clarification, and I imagine it's a common enough objection that he's already written about it.
It also matters heavily what coercion means compared to force, since the two words are sometimes used interchangeably in the non-aggression axiom.
Initiation of force or coercion is wrong.
Does or mean if an action constitutes either force or coercion, or does or mean that coercion is to be considered a synonym for force?
It cannot be said, in my opinion, that the friend of the pill-taker commits coercion, but he certainly commits force.
Some of the nuances were omitted in Carlos's reiteration of the dilemma, i.e.
the fact that the pill-taker does not want to consume a pill that would harm him.
I will continue to pile them on.
Perhaps the pill-taker would later thank his friend for stopping him from taking the pill, even though he used physical force.
In such cases, I would criticize the non-aggression axiom as being impractical.
It does occur sometimes that other people do know what is better for us, though it may be rare.
The friend of the pill taker can be as certain as anything else he is able to perceive that he does indeed know the pill taker's will better than the pill taker.
A slapping of someone's hand is hardly an evil compared to allowing a friend to accidentally murder himself.
What sort of warped mind does it take to believe that?
I suspect Molyneux would argue that my scenarios are improbable and thus irrelevant.
For example, looking at the thread where Molyneux claims that, quote, a murderer is irrational, Keitel catches Molyneux begging the question and demonstrates the faulty logic with a counter example.
Then Molyneux says, but frankly I don't care about those people and I don't think you should either.
Then he completely veers off topic and repeats his mantra about the evils of the state.
I think it is revealing that he often repeats the state is evil in any topic completely out of the blue.
Anyway, I guess none of what I have written really gets to the heart of the matter, but another article by Molyneux does.
Molyneux says of it in another thread, I've actually worked out a proof of morality which you can find at Lou Rockwell.
So he says here, there are too many flaws with his article to list here, so I will stick with the most serious ones.
He shifts the definition of morality throughout the article.
He says, The first question regarding moral theories is, what are they?
Simply put, morals are a set of rules claiming to accurately and consistently identify preferred human behaviors.
At first glance, this definition may be okay.
He's obviously in a generous mood.
However, it does not make it clear who is doing the preferring.
By preferred behavior, he means, quote, behavior that ought to be preferred by people, sometimes.
But this is not something that is amenable to testing or observation.
In what sense can you observe something that ought to be?
We can only observe things that are.
When you say something ought to be, you are defining something, not describing something.
Thus, it is not amenable to the scientific method.
By preferred behavior he means, quote, behavior that a person, people, prefers, then you can identify and observe it.
Sorry, you can observe and identify it.
This is called sociology, and it is, by stark contrast to Molyneux philosophical discussions, something that can be studied using the scientific method.
Molyneux uses the word moral theory in the ought-to-be-preferred sense.
He argues, no moral theory can be valid if it argues that a certain action is right in Syria but wrong in San Francisco.
Of course not, but you can't test the theory either, since it isn't descriptive.
Given a group of Syrians and a group of San Franciscans, what tests can you possibly perform on them to confirm or deny a theory of which, quote, behaviors ought to be preferred by all people everywhere?
Let's suppose a moral theory that initiation of coercion or force is wrong is proposed.
What observation about Syrians could hypothetically disprove that theory?
There is nothing, because the theory is not descriptive.
It doesn't matter what you observe about Syrians or San Franciscans or any other group of people on Earth from any period of time.
Nothing you see could ever disprove a moral theory about behavior which ought to be.
Contrast this with theories of evolution or relativity.
There are lots of observations which could hypothetically disprove evolution.
Darwin listed several in his Origin of the Species.
He said something to the effect of, you could completely and utterly disprove my theory if you observed that.
Einstein theories predicted light would be bent by gravity, blah, blah, blah.
What predictions can you make from the statement, initiation of coercion is always wrong?
There's nothing. It's not a description of reality.
It makes no predictions.
It can't be falsified.
It can't be disproven.
It's not science.
Molyneux apparently thinks it is, though.
I won't even go into why his five arguments to prove that preferred behavior or moral rules must exist are flawed.
All right, so this is a very, very instructive email on very, very many levels.
I mean, I just mentioned briefly about the logic of it, although I don't think that's really the writer's intent around logic.
This idea that you can look at people and extract their moral rules from them is really false, obviously, and so it's a straw man that he's talking about when he's talking about my argument.
And it's really easy to figure out if you just shift the metaphor to nutrition, say, right?
So if you say that people should not eat a steady diet of red meat, but there's some town where people do eat a steady diet of red meat, what does that mean?
Does that mean that your theory is false?
No, of course not. If you have sort of tests and logic and empirical evidence that says, yes, here's why you shouldn't just eat red meat, that you should vary your diet with fruits and vegetables and carbs and so on, Then the fact that people don't follow it doesn't invalidate your theory, right? You don't sort of say, well, what should people eat?
What should people eat?
What ought people to eat?
And then say, well, the way that I'm going to figure out what people ought to eat is do a big empirical review of everything that people eat.
I guess find the majority and say, well, that's what people should eat, right?
That would be a descriptive but not prescriptive situation.
If you're saying, as a nutritionist, this is what people ought to eat, Then you need to have the logic of biology, you need to have empirical tests, all these sorts of things.
Follow the scientific method. Now, if you're saying that a mathematical theory is true, then it just has to be logical and internally consistent, right?
You don't have to have empirical observations for a thought experiment like mathematics.
And, of course, if you're dealing with it in terms of physics, then you do have to have empirical observations.
But this kind of stuff is not that hard to figure out.
So when I'm saying that any moral theory is a theory which attempts to define universally preferred human behaviors, I don't see that that's descriptive at all.
It's prescriptive. If you have a theory which says what other people should do, and if you don't have a theory which says what other people should do, that's no problem.
No problem at all. Not everybody has to be a moral theoretician.
Not everyone has to be a moral philosopher.
No problem there at all. I mean, I don't know tax law, but I'm glad that there are some people who do, and not everyone has to be a moral philosopher.
So you don't have to have Any particular statements in your life which says what other people should do.
I think it's going to be a little difficult to live, but basically, you don't have to do it at all.
But if you do, if you put forward a theory, or if you put forward rules which say, here's how other people should act.
Let's say you're a parent, and you sort of say, here's how my children should act, right?
Cannibalism is sort of out, and poking each other in the eye with a fork is out, and And punching is out, and teasing is out, whatever, right?
Whatever it is that you're going to come up with as a parent, or maybe you're a teacher and you've got kids in your class, maybe you're a professor, maybe you have employees, maybe you prefer that people stay in their lanes on the highway, whatever, right?
Whatever you've got in your life that is a theory about how other people should act is automatically a prescriptive theory.
It's not descriptive like the sky is blue, but it's prescriptive, like my children should not punch people.
Now, You don't then go around, when you sort of say, how should my kids act?
You don't really, generally, go around and say, well, how do children throughout the world act?
In Syria and in San Francisco, and I'll find the balance.
But you don't do that. What you do is you generally, if you're a parent, you will appeal to some sort of abstract theory about how people should act.
And it may be as simple as, you know, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
And it may be a lot more complex.
But basically, you're going to have some sort of theory about how people should act.
Now, if you do have a theory about how people should act, that is obviously binding on other people, in your own mind at least.
I mean, this is not that complicated, right?
A nutritionist is going to say, you should eat such and such, and you should not eat a steady diet of a carob.
If you want to be healthy, then you should eat these foods and those foods.
This is not that complicated a thing to work out.
In the nutrition realm.
I understand that it's confusing in the moral realm because we've been fed so much nonsense about it.
But if you're going to come up with a theory that says here's how other people should act, then it has to be universal.
It has to be universal.
It can't just be for this guy, right?
Because then it's not binding. Then it's just an opinion.
And so if it's a moral theory, then it's how other people should act.
It's how the world should act.
It's universal. Because if it's not universal, then it's just an opinion.
It's like me saying, I think you should have a tan.
Why? Well, I just like people who have tans.
It's not a moral theory, right?
And you're not going to feel particularly bound by it, unless you just happen to want to please me in terms of how I look.
But if you did say, okay, I'll go get a tan because you like people with tans, you're not going to say, but that makes me a moral human being, right?
I mean, it would just make you somebody who's willing to trade a potential for skin cancer for social approval.
Who knows? But you wouldn't claim that it's any kind of moral thing.
So, all I'm saying, and this is really not...
It's not complicated, which doesn't mean that it's easy.
It's actually harder because it's not complicated.
I understand that it can be provocative to say to people, it's really simple, you just don't get it.
It's a lot simpler than you think, but it's hard to get because ethics have been so complicated for us.
But if you do come up with a theory that says here's how people should act...
Then, for that theory to be valid, it has to be universal, it has to be valid across locations, it has to be valid throughout time, and all this, right?
So, a theory which says people must steal is contradictory for reasons I've gone into before, and a theory which says people should not steal is something which can be practiced consistently, and so...
This is not really that complicated, and there's just like a couple, right?
It's like, don't initiate force, and keep your contracts.
The second one being a little less important.
So, it's only the case that if you put forward a moral theory, it has to be consistent.
And if you don't put forward a moral theory, or you put forward a moral theory that's inconsistent, it's just not a valid moral theory.
And it's called hypocrisy.
So, I'll give you an example.
Like, if I'm somebody who has a moral theory which says poverty...
Poverty is the ultimate state of virtue.
Poverty is the best good goodness that you could ever achieve.
So, I want you to send me all of your money so that you can achieve virtue.
And then I say, keep that money and perhaps buy lots of property in Rome and call it the Vatican or whatever, right?
So, poverty, right?
Cast off all ye worldly possessions, ye who would follow me, right?
So he's saying basically don't own anything, and then once you become one with the poor, you can follow me.
So the Pope says, that's great.
Now if you could give us this money, then you can achieve virtue.
Well, that obviously is not a universal moral rule, because if the moral rule is, owning possessions is bad, so you should give me your possessions, then the person who's saying, give me your possessions, does not believe that owning possessions is bad, because they're saying, give me your possessions, right?
I mean, this is a very clear example of something we would call moral hypocrisy.
It's the rule, it's good for you, But it doesn't apply to me.
Soldiers are the same thing.
In the private world, you can't pay someone to go and kill someone that you dislike, but if you call it the military and taxation, then suddenly it becomes a noble virtue.
So there's this another example of moral hypocrisy.
If you see parents hitting children saying don't hit, then obviously they have a moral rule which says hitting is bad, but then they're hitting, and so that's called moral hypocrisy, and this is how you know that if the rule called hitting is bad is correct, then the parents are doing something wrong.
And if the rule called don't-hitting is not correct, then them saying that the rule is don't-hitting is morally hypocritical.
It's not wildly complicated, and it's something that we all understand at an intuitive level, because moral hypocrisy is something that all human beings are sensitive to, unfortunately, and that's why it takes 14 years of state propaganda and endless bouts with the media to sort of drill, to make this blind spot with us with regards to the state.
So, his sense that there's a big problem about my argument because it doesn't describe, but it prescribes, is like, well, yeah, because moral theories are prescriptions, right?
And it is empirical, of course.
If you have a theory which says that property rights are not valid, and that nobody consumes any food or uses any kind of property whatsoever, and that society flourishes and does well, and there's empirical tests for this kind of stuff, like the more that property rights are enforced, The better a country does.
The smaller the state, the faster economic growth that occurs, and the more bureaucracy and form-filling that you have, the slower the economic growth.
There's lots of ways to measure moral theories in practice, right?
I mean, the big example is the mysticism of the Middle Ages versus the rationalism of the Enlightenment.
What was going on in terms of social progress.
There's lots of ways to measure it.
So, there are empirical tests for ethical theories, but the first thing that is required is that they be consistent.
Or, if they're not consistent, then you can't ask for consistency in any other realm, right?
If you say, well, my theories can be illogical and apply to just three guys, then that's fine, but then don't criticize anyone else for anything, right?
Because then you've sort of gotten rid of consistency as a criteria for your theories.
So, this question around the pill taker, I think, is fussy.
I don't think it really matters.
I know that he thinks that everything needs to be perfectly and finally consistent and worked out, but as I've argued, perfection is the enemy of the good, and perfection is paralysis, especially in the moral realm.
So, we can keep arguing about that kind of stuff, but it really is fiddling while Rome burns, and that's fine.
I know he doesn't like that opinion of mine.
That's fine. That's just a matter of opinion.
But here's where things get, frankly, kind of bitchy, right?
I mean, this is a very interesting...
This made me angry.
This is, I think, a real insult.
There's a whole series of insults in this email.
And I really did sort of debate about whether to podcast on this.
Because this is the kind of trap that you get into with these kinds of people.
So what they do is they insinuate a whole bunch of heavily, heavily insulting stuff about your personality and your motives and your capacity to reason.
And then if you get angry, like if you actually respond to the emotional content of the argument, they say, well, you're really defensive.
I guess I hit a nerve. See how angry Molyneux got when somebody criticized him?
You see, that's not healthy, right?
If he can't take criticism, he shouldn't be out there in the public realm.
He shouldn't be publishing articles.
He can't expect everyone to agree with him all the time, blah, blah, blah.
So this is a kind of false self, no-win trap.
Because if you respond to the aggression and the passive aggression of this particular kind of email or argument approach, then you get labeled defensive and reactive and insecure and culty and whatever, right?
It's oversensitive. And if you respond to the intellectual content, then you really can't have a productive debate.
Because what this guy has done by writing down this kind of stuff, and this was just in an email.
I posted it on the boards for other people's comments as well.
But what he's done is he's basically called me a paranoid, retarded, culty, emotionally insecure, immature.
I veer off topic when I'm contradicted, and then I repeat a mantra about the evils of the state.
This is a kind of bitchy language.
It's an F.U. kind of language that we've talked about before.
I repeat my mantra.
This is obviously not somebody who respects my argument.
And he says, I think it is revealing that he often repeats the state is evil in any topic completely out of the blue.
Well, of course, if you understand anything about my philosophy, then it's not really completely out of the blue to say that an agency that killed a dozen members of my family and murders a couple hundred million people in a single century is evil.
I don't really think that that's out of the blue or just repeating a mantra, but of course he doesn't really want to examine the moral topic because he doesn't want to deal with an agency that kills hundreds of millions of people.
He wants to deal with the once-in-ten lifetimes where you come across a friend who's taken a pill that might be...
It might be damaging, right?
That's his particular preference.
And then he has a go at my article, Proving Libertarian Morality, which is available on LewRockwell.com.
There are too many flaws to list here.
I will stick to the most serious one, right?
So what he's saying is that my argument is so ridiculously bad that there's no point going into all of it, but apparently the big problem is that I switch my definitions of morality, and I'm not sure that he proves that.
So I put the rules, morals, a set of rules claiming to accurately, consistently identify preferred behavior.
Identify and accurately and consistently identify preferred human behaviors.
Now, I understand where his confusion is here, and I fully respect that.
When I say identify human behaviors, preferred human behaviors, he thinks that I mean in the real world, like some sort of what do people do in Syria, what do people do in San Francisco, and so on.
But, of course, that's not what I'm talking about.
I think the article is fairly clear about that, and this is the one thing that he picked on, that he's going to sort of chew up and spit out and then get rid of the whole argument.
So he says, he does not make it clear who is doing the preferring.
And of course, I think that that's completely encapsulated in the definition of moral rules, right?
Theories which claim to accurately and consistently identify preferred human behaviors.
And then he says, but who's doing the preferring?
And it's like, well, the person who puts forward the moral theory is doing the preferring.
That's the basis that's in the definition of moral rules.
If moral rules are theories claiming to accurately and consistently identify preferred human behaviors, then obviously the person who's doing the preferring is the person who's putting forward the moral rules.
That would seem to me to be somewhat accurate, but he doesn't follow me on that, and that's fine.
I can understand that that might be confusing.
And then he says that if by preferred behaviors, then he means that I mean what people actually do in the world.
But see, then it wouldn't be a theory, then it would be an observation, right?
See, that's sort of the difference. A theory says a rock will fall, an observation says this rock fell.
And so if morality is a theory, then it needs obviously to have some observation, but basically it's going to project into the future and say this is, if human beings should obey these rules and they have to be universal and consistent, and there is a predictive element in morality in that if you get rid of all of the property rights in the world, then society starves to death within a couple of, well, probably within a day or two because you can't drink water or Eat food.
And if you say, well, only some people have property rights a la communism and some people don't, then you get a society of bloodshed and slaughter and 70 million people get murdered in Russia alone within 70 years.
So you do have some predictive capacities within moral theorizing, but you don't just sit there and describe and note down what people do choose and then say, well, that's my moral theory, because that's just a description.
It's not prescriptive at all.
It's not a theory. It's simply a set of observations.
So, I say, no moral theory can be valid if it argues that a certain action is right in Syria but wrong in San Francisco.
And then he says, but you can't test this theory either since it isn't descriptive.
He says, given a group of Syrians and a group of San Franciscans, what test can you possibly perform on them to confirm or deny a theory of which behaviors ought to be preferred by all people everywhere?
Well, of course you can't.
It's a moral theory, which is supposed to say to people, this is the binding resolution which says, here's how you should act.
And so, of course, the fact that people act differently doesn't matter.
The first time that somebody figured out that there was no God, it wasn't like you went around the whole world and said, well, do people believe in God or not?
And, well, the majority of people do, and therefore, whatever, whatever, right?
This is a prescriptive thing.
When Bacon came up with the scientific theory in the 16th century, it wasn't that everybody suddenly immediately believed in the scientific theory.
He was just saying, if you want to accurately identify nature, then you need empiricism, you need logic, you need reproducible and empirical tests, and so on.
And contrast this with theories of evolution of relativity.
So he's saying that there's no null hypothesis for my particular approach to ethics.
And that's not true at all.
I mean, obviously, if societies which have contradictory ethics flourish, then that would be something that would be quite a pause in the realm of ethical theories.
As I've said in a number of articles, ethical theories which are predictive in nature also have to explain things like the Holocaust.
They also have to explain things like the rise of wealth that occurred with capitalism and the destruction of human life that occurs with socialism.
They have to explain why government grows.
There's a lot of things that are empirically testable that moral theories have to work with, but he only read one article and obviously didn't read all the way through it.
But the other thing that I find fascinating is that he's saying, basically, you can't prove the existence of universally preferred behavior, and so this theory is invalid.
In other words, he's saying that all theories have to prove universal predictive behavior.
In other words, there is a universal criteria Which I prefer, which is not just my preference, but universal, that all theories have to pass test, right?
Pass muster. So, if somebody says, well, your theory is not rational, therefore it's false, Then, obviously, they say that there's such a thing as universally preferred behavior.
In this case, it would be arguing rationally, right?
So, this is the basic conundrum that people get caught up into when they start denying the theory of universally preferred behavior because they say, well, I don't see any evidence for it, let's say.
Let's just say this is the gist of the guy's argument.
Well, the problem is that then he's saying that it's universally preferred that there'd be physical evidence for theories.
Which then confirms universally preferred behavior.
In other words, the behavior of moralists should be to gather evidence and prove their theories.
It's universally preferred. I'm rejecting your argument because you're not fulfilling my universally preferred criteria of evidence or logic or whatever.
And so, you can't then deny that universally preferred behavior exists.
You can only oppose an argument for universally preferred behavior by applying standards of universally preferred behavior, evidence, logic, scientific method, or whatever.
So this is the sort of paradox that people get into when they start arguing against universally preferred behavior.
It's like arguing against logic.
You can't do it, because if you say that logic is not valid, then the only thing that can be valid is opinion.
But then, if opinions are valid, you can't ever say to anyone else, you're wrong, because you both have opinions, and there's no standard by which you can prove anybody else wrong, or say that anyone, you can say it, but it doesn't make any sense.
If everybody's opinion is perfectly valid, Then saying to somebody else, your opinion is false or incorrect is ridiculous, right?
There has to be some standard by which you can judge that.
And logic is the one that makes sense and works, and it's based on observations of reality.
Now, the reason that the discrediting may occur is that this really made me angry.
And the reason that it made me angry is, obviously, there's an enormous amount of contempt and dismissal and condescension and scorn and insults littered throughout this.
And, of course, there's this theory, and I chatted about this with Christina this morning, right?
There's this theory that says, well, you just don't rise to it.
Well, I don't agree with that theory.
I don't agree with that theory.
The problem that I have with this kind of argument is a couple fault.
Let's just say that I am as retarded as this guy thinks I am.
That I can't think my way out of a paper bag.
That the copious amounts of mental sweat that I poured into the problems of ethics are completely wasted and I'm just an idiot who is defensive and paranoid and emotional and culty and completely irrational.
And he is so clear-eyed and rational, logical, and wise.
Well, why would he be contemptuous of me then?
If I have some...
A friend of mine comes over from Spain and brings his retarded child, who laboriously sits over a piece of paper with a crayon, writing, my friend's father, best friend, is with the head, with no hair, who then has with the teeth and chomping.
And this retarded Spanish child holds up this completely nonsensical and poorly constructed sentence that has no valid content and says, this best thing ever!
Am I going to be scornful and contemptuous of this retarded child's attempt to do something, or am I simply going to be kind and gentle and say, that's a great effort, here's what I would suggest, or here's how you might improve it.
You would be kind and gentle, like if I really was that retarded, and this guy really was that wise and smart and could see every single one of my logical flaws, then he would be kind and gentle and nice about correcting me, right?
And that would be something that I would really appreciate, because I love to be corrected if I'm making mistakes.
And I'm not saying he's wrong.
He could be right about every criticism.
I just can't sort of understand it from what he's saying.
And the emotional tone is really off-putting.
Because if he really did think that I was this retarded and stupid and paranoid and this and that, then...
He would probably, I mean, I think it would make sense that he would send me kind, nice emails gently correcting me on areas where I'd made mistakes.
That would be the rational thing to do if you were so wise and smart and the person that you're debating with was so stupid and retarded that they couldn't even get 2 plus 2 is 4 correct.
You'd be kind of nice and kind about it, and so on, but this guy is not.
He intimates that I'm paranoid about the state, and the moment I get corrected I veer off on some other topic, and so on, and that I'm changing definitions all the time, and I'm claiming that something is scientific, and I have absolutely no clue about the scientific method, and it's It's culty and religious and mystical because there's no null hypothesis and all this kind of stuff.
So it's an enormous series of insults to my personal integrity and to my intellect.
I don't really care about insults to my intellect because the Lord knows nobody's omniscient.
So if somebody, I mean, good Lord, I'm sure I make errors and if people can correct me on those errors, fantastic.
I appreciate that. It's wonderful.
The other thing that I think is quite interesting about this is that, as I've mentioned before, if I was given an hour to learn ancient Greek, I wouldn't have a clue how to do it.
I would never, ever, ever be able to achieve it.
So not knowing ancient Greek within an hour is not a particular kind of flaw.
Now, if this guy says, well, universally preferred behavior is not a valid argument, and the way that he attempts to disprove that is using the universally preferred mechanism of logic, then I could probably, and it depends on his level of sort of prickliness in this area, I could probably, in about ten seconds with a whiteboard, at least give him an idea that that might be a contradictory notion.
That if you're saying universally preferred behavior is not valid because it's illogical according to the universally preferred behavior of logic, then you could at least say to someone, there might be a problem with that.
Now, somebody with real integrity would say, yeah, I guess I have to go back to the drawing board because I can't argue against universally preferred behavior using the universally preferred criteria of logic.
So somebody might go back to the drawing board and sort of figure out that they've made a sort of error, and it's an understandable error, and maybe there's something that I've missed, and this person can sort of gently and kindly correct me and so on.
But this person could figure that out in about 10 seconds, that there might be a problem with this formulation and with this approach.
And also that I say that it's not descriptive in this article.
I never say that it's descriptive, so him saying that it has to be descriptive is not A valid approach.
And all of the general insults that he heaps upon my intellectual integrity and my emotional maturity and all this kind of stuff, that all of these kinds of insults that he's really sort of plying on, That they may be a little less than valid, right?
That this may not be the right way to approach an intellectual debate.
And he would then argue, I'm sure, and say, well, you dismiss people with the pill metaphor.
And I'm like, yes, I do.
I absolutely do dismiss people with the pill metaphor, not because it's completely unimportant.
It's just that in the hierarchy of what it is that we're trying to deal with as ethicists, it's really not that big a deal.
And also I say there are grey areas at the edge of every moral science because it's biologically based and therefore it only means the standard of accuracy that biology does.
And in biological classifications there are grey areas, there are mutations.
So yeah, we don't throw out the whole science of biology because there's grey areas at the edges of the definitions of species and so on.
And so it just doesn't seem to me to be that valid an approach.
And that important an approach.
And the answer I don't think is too, too hard.
I mean, you can do whatever you want, but the other person has the right, if you've done something against their wishes, to then charge you with assault, and you have to sort of respect that.
But the problem with somebody who comes on this strong as well is that there's a couple of problems with it.
First of all, I personally would not debate with somebody who came with this kind of insulting approach to ideas and basically called me a complete idiot and paranoid and all these sorts of things.
I wouldn't debate with someone like this.
And not because I'm so oversensitive, but just because it won't be productive.
This is kind of like a game.
This is somebody working out personal issues of corruption by fogging up the issues of ethics and by getting angry at somebody who's trying to work out an ethical definition.
And even if I'm completely wrong, it was pretty tough to do.
I think it would be worth at least respecting somebody who puts a moral theory out there because it is a tough thing to do and you do get a lot of insulting emails.
This one particularly stuck in my craw because it combines a whole bunch of things.
So it's not that I'm so oversensitive.
If somebody's going to start insulting me, this is the problem that occurs when somebody puts out these kinds of hostilities.
And the reason that I'm talking about this is that you're going to face this if you don't already face this.
And this is an important thing to understand.
So if somebody basically starts insulting you and calling you immature and paranoid and retarded and so on, and does it in this sort of superior, supercilious, contemptuous, scornful, I'm so superior kind of way...
Then you're going to get really stuck.
Because if you respond to the emotional content, as I mentioned before, you're going to get called oversensitive.
And if you respond to the intellectual content, then the person is going to have a really, really, really, really hard time backing down.
In fact, I would say that it's virtually impossible.
Because if you come on real strong, and you call someone an idiot, and then it turns out that in about 10 seconds, you can at least understand that your position may be problematic.
If this guy's totally come to the conclusion and communicated to his brother that this Molyneux fellow, he's a real idiot, he doesn't have a clue, plus he's paranoid and emotionally unstable and culty, then if in about 10 seconds it can be proven that there's at least reason to doubt that opinion, Then what is this person going to have to figure out about themselves, right?
This is important to understand what goes on emotionally for people when they argue.
Because you want to know, as I said before, are we really arguing about the logic?
Are we really arguing about the ethics?
Are we really arguing about the topic at hand?
Or is there something much deeper and often weirder going on?
And so somebody like this, who comes on really strong and contemptuous to an argument that I've put forward, How easy is it going to be for them to back down, emotionally?
How easy is it going to be for them to say, yes, I do understand that I may have made an error.
And I'm not saying that maybe this guy didn't make an error, but how open is he going to be to the possibility that he made an error?
Well, I'll tell you. I bet you he's going to be completely and totally close to it.
Because if he comes on really strong and contemptuous and belittling and so on, And then in about 10 seconds, I could prove to him that he may be wrong.
Then he's going to have to look at himself, basically, and say, gee, I wonder why I did that.
Why didn't I take the 10 seconds to at least try and understand this guy's argument a little bit more clearly?
Why is it that I became so hostile and so contemptuous and so bitchy about this guy's personality and about this guy's arguments?
And why did I make it so personal?
And why am I so hostile?
In an irrational way towards somebody's arguments.
Now that's a pretty tough thing to look at in yourself.
It's a tough thing to look at yourself if you've only done it sort of in your own mind, gotten angry at people who are working to come up with moral definitions and so on.
But if you've actually put it out there and you've put it...
If you've got that sort of really false self kind of superiority thing going, especially with your brother.
I don't know if this is an older or younger brother.
I would suspect that it's an older brother who's just a know-it-all.
I could be wrong. But if you've kind of taken that stance of, I'm so much smarter than Molyneux, I don't even bother refuting his article beyond one sort of point because there's so many errors, I don't even know where to start, and he's paranoid about the state, and he's emotionally immature, and he's oversensitive, he can't take criticism, he just veers off topic.
If I've taken that stance, then if it turns out that I'm incorrect, I'm going to have a whole lot of trouble gaining credibility again.
A whole lot of trouble gaining credibility again.
That's why it's sort of important not to come on too strong when you're dealing with arguments with people whose opinion you respect, right, and want to sort of keep in contact with and have some status with.
If you come on too strong with people and say, well, this guy's just a paranoid asshole, and you'll notice, of course, that if you've listened to the one about the Marine, I never call him that name.
I do sort of come up with criteria by which I would question his, I definitely do question his assumptions.
But even against somebody who's a paid killer, it's important not to come on too strong.
And to just call somebody paranoid and so on and think that you've made some kind of argument.
If this guy's brother, the guy who sent this email, if his brother were able to sort of point out a couple of flaws in this guy's argument, is he going to be able to climb down off this incredibly superior and contemptuous perch and say, wow, you know, I didn't even, I missed that point.
And I guess I really have to apologize for coming on so strong, and I have to really back down, and I have to go and re-read this with a new eye, and I have to look at every other debate that I've been in and see, have I been this insulting and contemptuous and this bitchy?
Towards other people in my debates?
And have I ever, you know, if I have kids, have I taught them with this kind of really snarky, bitchy attitude?
Have I really insulted lots of people in my life?
Do I actually have to go back and apologize?
And what was it that made me be this hyper-aggressive?
And what is it in me that is so insecure that I have to...
Come on this strong with somebody, because if this Molyneux guy really is retarded and can't figure anything out, then why is it that I'm so contemptuous?
Why can't I just be kind and help this person out of their error?
What is so weak and pathetic in me that I have to strut around and insult people in intellectual debates?
I mean, boy, that's a lot to take on emotionally.
I mean, that would be a very, very hard thing to look in the mirror and say, "You know what?
I've been kind of vicious in my approach to debating with people, and that's probably done quite a lot of harm.
There's lots of areas.
You can be vicious with a sales clerk.
You can be vicious in letters you send to Revenue Canada or to the IRS. You can be vicious in complaining about somebody else's cake recipe.
And those things are not very nice.
But if you're vicious in the realm of ethical and philosophical debate, then you're going to turn people off from the greatest pursuit in the world, which is the pursuit of truth and the rigor of rationality and all of the challenges and emotional difficulties that go on.
Along with trying to be a rational and wise human being.
It's all a very difficult pursuit.
And if you're bitchy and vicious and contemptuous in the realm of philosophical debate, then you're going to turn a lot of people off.
They're going to sort of, oh, okay, I guess I don't know what I'm doing.
Maybe I shouldn't touch this anymore.
Oh, obviously I'm just such an idiot that I can't deal with anything.
I'm going to leave this to some sort of experts out there who, whatever, right?
So if you intimate that somebody who's striving to come up with definitions of moral theory, it's not the easiest thing in the world to do.
And if you say, okay, well, this guy's just an idiot.
He's retarded. And then if I sort of believed that, and I'm like, oh, okay, well, I guess I just didn't know what I was doing.
Then I'm going to withdraw from the field.
Well, you've kind of done a lot of harm in the world, I think.
I think you want to encourage people.
To pursue intellectual topics.
I think you want to encourage people to pursue rationality.
I would even encourage this guy to pursue rationality.
I just don't want to encourage him to do it in this kind of vicious manner, because he's done a lot of harm in the world by being vicious about intellectual ideas, and he's done it when he's talking with people he went to school with, and he's done it maybe with his own kids.
He's certainly done it with his brother.
It's kind of a mean and vicious and unpleasant thing to do, and in this particular field, it's very, very bad, right?
I mean, it's pretty much the same as saying to people, you should never become a doctor.
You should never get involved in medicine.
Well, I think doctors are actually kind of important and kind of good to have around.
And so anybody who wants to get involved in medicine has to endure the withering scorn of my contempt for years.
And, you know, it's like, well, okay, but why would you want to?
So if he's focusing on anyone who's trying to do anything, or I don't mean anyone, maybe just me, right?
It could just be me. But if he's focusing on my efforts in the intellectual and philosophical realm, And pouring all this withering scorn and contempt and insults on these particular issues and topics, then that's going to reflect to a whole load of other people.
And the reason that I'm doing this podcast is not for this guy's brother, this listener, but for him himself, to understand that the intellectual energy that he's putting into understanding market anarchy or philosophy or economics or whatever...
Look, your brother is going to pour the same scorn on you that he does on me.
This is not somebody who really enjoys the pursuit of knowledge.
This is somebody who uses a lot of linguistic tricks and bitchery to put down other people who are involved in an honest and open intellectual discourse.
This is not somebody who's going to help you on your road to philosophical understanding.
This is not somebody who's going to be a lot of fun to have around in your pursuit of knowledge.
And I may be incorrect, but I still think that I'm sort of fun to have around in the pursuit of knowledge because I do try and make it entertaining and enjoyable.
And I love the topic so much, and I love the people who are involved in it so much that it's really hard for me to ever be really hostile towards this kind of stuff.
But your brother here, and this is true for the people out there who are listening to this, who run into this kind of contempt, Check your feelings.
Really, really, really.
Just check your feelings. What do you feel when you're debating with someone?
Do you feel enthusiastic and energetic?
Or do you feel like scared and beaten down and tentative?
You know, this is really important.
And it's not just, oh, debate with everyone who just agrees with you, but they sure have to agree with you on the basics.
Like, it's got to be respectful.
It's got to be something that, if somebody's really grievously in error, that you try and correct them gently and kindly, because that's not really being a very good teacher or coach, is to just sort of scorn people and piss on their attempts.
I don't know.
Well, I don't think that's the case at all.
But I certainly don't want to debate with people who are rude.
I certainly don't want to debate with people who are hostile and contemptuous.
I have too much self-esteem for that.
I just don't go for that. I just think that that's an unpleasant thing, which I wouldn't do in any way, shape, or form, because why would I? Why would I put myself through something unpleasant?
If someone has something to teach me, I certainly appreciate that.
They can approach me at least with the respect that I'm straining to understand.
Maybe I am a retarded Spanish child putting out things that don't make any sense.
I don't think so, but maybe I am.
In which case, a gentle and wise correction...
from a vastly superior intellect to mind would be more than welcome.
But contemptuous and passive-aggressive and bitchy comments about my ideas, followed by a rank misinterpretation, followed by a dismissal of not even a full article, let alone the entire body of 70 or so articles and I don't think it's very productive and I would really caution people to avoid getting involved in debates with these kinds of people.
It really can't lead to any good and they're not going to be able to change their mind once they've come on so heavy and so aggressive and so contemptuous.
If you ever were to get close to proving them wrong, it would be like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall.
They would simply change their definition, go off in some other direction, insult you some more.
I mean, this is a ridiculously pathetic game wherein every time you get close to proving somebody else incorrect, they're just going to eel away in some direction that's different because, fundamentally because, they've come on so strong to begin with that their sort of false self can't take correction because they've really put themselves out there As superior and all-wise and all-knowing and contemptuous, and if it turns out that they then have made a logical error, they simply would not have the ego strength to handle that.
And so I just sort of recommend steer clear of these people.
It's not going to be pleasant and it's not going to be productive.
But if I am completely wrong about this, and if this gentleman's brother wants to debate me on Skype, I'd be more than happy to have that conversation, because then I think you might get to see that in action.
Thank you so much for listening.
Look forward to donations. Come sign up for FeedBurner and if you could fill out the listener survey, I'd appreciate that too.
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