All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 2, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
34:01
582 Debating Amateurs
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hello, my darlings. I hope you're doing well.
Hello, babies. It's Steph.
I am heading home.
It's the 2nd of January 2006.
Not quite June yet.
And I thought I'm back on the YouTube kick.
I'm not sure why. We've had quite a number of people sign up to subscribe to the YouTube-y things.
And so I thought I'd throw a few more out there.
Just to satisfy those some gentlemen kindly posted and said that, hey, this is the most interesting half hour of my week.
Well, my friend, let me tell you, it will no longer be a half hour, and it will no longer be every week.
But we'll see. Until the whim fails me again, I shall continue.
And it being...
Toronto. I must not merge, but rather ram.
So let me just get out of this parking lot.
It's just so much safer to do it here when I am not fiddling on the highway with the actual keys, which I know makes some people just a little nervous.
So the topic for today is amateurs and how to avoid them.
And having been an amateur myself for low many, many years, I thought that I would share with you a couple of ways which are helpful in avoiding rancorous, unpleasant, difficult debates in the realm of philosophy.
It's so, so, so essential to make sure that you keep Your philosophical unhappiness to an absolute bare minimum.
Philosophy is something that is such a great treasure that it's very important to hang tight and hang on to your joy of philosophy.
And that may mean spending time with great books, whether the philosophers agree with you or not, or listening to great philosophers.
If you can get a hold of any audiobook readings, then I can recommend the site audible.com.
Which has just a wonderful list of audiobooks that you can choose from.
But you really do have to hang on to your joy and philosophy, and it seems, or it would seem, that there are an inordinate number of people out there who seem to take peculiar, fetishistic, and, dare I say, almost sadistic joy.
Sorry, I don't mean to be overly cool, but it just can never get too dark for me when it comes to driving.
But... There are lots of people out there who take this real pleasure in just getting in and opposing you when you're looking at or thinking about philosophical ideas or items.
They just love it.
They're like these negative polarized kind of people and all they live and love to do Is to find people who have something to put forward in the realm of philosophy and just nuke them from orbit.
And they'll do this using a variety of techniques, which we may or may not talk about.
I'm more concerned with the intellectual content than I am with the emotional manipulations and games.
So, let's see.
I think we need to go to our backup sunglasses.
Those are just a little too dark.
Do-do-do-do.
Oh, yeah, baby.
Oh, that's good stuff. You know, when you drive your pleasures, you have to just take them where you can.
So, there's a couple of ways that are...
A couple of things that are important to get at when you're debating with someone.
Dr. Phil, noted philosopher Dr.
Philip McGraw, talks about when you date...
It's important to talk about your values with the person that you're dating.
I mean, I would say that's quite important.
And as Christina said to me, I think on her second date, you can stay, the artwork, and the baby oil.
Not so much. So it's good.
I knew that she didn't like baby oil.
So it's important to talk about values with somebody you're dating so you don't sort of end up raising kids going, What?
Catholic? What are you talking about?
Get back from my baby boy with that razor blade.
I know that's not Catholic, but forgive me for mixing my metaphors and my religions and my superstitions.
Well, they're all superstitions. So, what I would suggest is that when you're debating with someone, it's usually a good idea to put them through a sort of sanity check or an amateur check.
And it probably is a good idea for you to put yourself through a sanity check as well.
I remember when I was, oh gosh, about 18, I grew up with...
Some friends who were verbally acute to a near-infinite razor blade scenario.
They were just whip-smart and whip-funny.
I could never keep up. There's a very rapid kind of philosophy that occurs when people are young.
It's just like, boom, boom, boom, the answers are this, the answers are this.
It's a facility of youth, and it definitely was my particular case as well.
I haven't really changed my ideas fundamentally since I was about 16, but I've become a lot more patient at stepping people through them, and I've become a lot more rigorous, believe it or not, in stepping through them myself to make sure that they make sense.
And after only about 20 years...
Was it 20? Gosh, longer than that, I think.
22 years of being a slave to other people's philosophy.
I finally did the wax on, wax off thing and was able to start flourishing in my own right.
But you really have to subordinate yourself to reality, to others, for quite a long time, at least I did, before originality really began to strike me and I was able to sort of think positively and creatively.
But I remember having a debate with these friends of mine, one of whom is still a friend of mine.
He was just over for Christmas.
You may have heard him on the podcast at Dinner with John.
But there was a debate that we were having about capital punishment.
And it really was not a debate as much as it was a yell fest, right?
So some people were saying, well, it costs this much to keep criminals in jail.
And that's unjust.
And other people were saying, well, the state shouldn't have the right to kill.
And other people were saying, well, you have the right to kill if somebody tries to attack you.
And other people were saying, well, there are people who are convicted of murder who are innocent and you can't bring them back.
And other people were saying, well, what does it matter if you have 60 years in jail and whether you're killed?
And it was basically just...
It's like trying to play soccer with a whole bunch of people with shotguns shooting at the ball.
I mean, all that happens is the ball gets shredded and everyone just fires into a smoking hole and nobody gets anywhere.
Certainly no goals, no termination, no victory or loss.
So, this is an important thing to figure out.
out.
If you're going to play with somebody, it's important to know what the rules are.
If you ever had this when you were a kid, I was the younger brother, or still am I guess, to an elder brother who was very verbally acute, very funny, and actually used to give Pocket money, allowance, I guess you'd call it here, just to make me laugh.
And he really did.
He was a very funny guy. But he was very much around change the rules kind of guy.
And so you may have had this thing where an older brother or someone says, no means yes, and yes means no.
Do you want me to hit you? And you don't know what to answer, right?
Because if you say no, then they say, well, no means yes, and they hit you.
And if you say yes, they say, oh, the time was up for that, and I'm going to hit you, right?
So this is a sort of no-win.
This is the kind of stuff where, you know, what's 1 plus 1?
You say it's 2. You say, no, it's 11, and they draw it out for you, two 1s next to each other.
If you say 11, they say, no, it's 2, duh.
So this kind of stuff was pretty constant and maddening, of course, and may have had no small impact upon me in my desire to find some sort of useful explication of the world that was a little more rationally consistent and have some opposition to impossible situations like, have you stopped beating your wife?
Who do you want to vote for?
And why do you want to go to hell?
So, maybe that had something to do with it.
But if you're going to sit down with someone and play a board game, you kind of want to know what the rules are.
So, if you're going to sit down and somebody's going to say, let's play cards, and they deal you like, I don't know, 19 cards, some face up, some face down, I think that it's a worthwhile thing to say, hey, What are the rules?
You know, why are you dealing me two clubs, one jack, a joker, and the instruction card?
And there's some...
There's, I can't remember, some Friends episode or some sitcom somewhere.
Somebody, remind me if you can remember it if your brain is younger than my creaky 40 years.
But somebody's trying to get somebody to win a game and they just keep making up.
I think it's a Friends episode.
And they keep making up the rules so that every time the other person puts the cards down, they're depressed because they think they've lost and they say, no, that's a win.
That's a perfect win. Well, that's socialism.
And that's not a very enjoyable way to play any sort of game.
So, when you sit down with someone, it's important to know what the rules are.
I'm sorry to overuse the metaphor, but if you sort of sit down to play chess with someone, and they line up the rooks and the pawns and the king and the queen and the bishop and so on, and then at the end where the rooks are, they don't put the rooks down. On one end they put a hamster, and on the other end they put a dildo.
It might be worth saying, are these involved if I lose?
Because I'm not sure I want to play if that's the case.
So, when you sit down to debate with someone, I think it's usually a good idea to have some sense of the rules.
And if you're lucky, they will involve a dildo and a hamstring.
And some duct tape.
So here's some ways to know whether or not you're dealing with somebody who knows what they're doing in the realm of philosophy.
Whether they know what they're doing or whether they're just a thrash around emotionally weird kind of amateur.
Well, the first thing to ask is somebody says, you're an atheist.
Well, I believe in God and you should believe in God too.
And it's a reasonable response is to say, okay.
Let's get it on, brother.
But, first and foremost, how do we know when we've won?
Now, of course, the Christian will hum and whore, whoever it is will hum and whore, but we'll generally say, well, I'll know that I've won when you convert to Lord Vishnu, our Savior, and abide with me in Hades.
Well, that's not really a definition of winning, right?
It's like, hey, let's play chess.
Great. I don't know the rules. How do we win?
Well, we win when you lose.
I win when you lose, they say.
It's like, okay, well, how do I win?
Well, that's not really part of the game.
Well, thanks, but I think I'll not play.
I think I'll decline.
And so when you're debating with somebody who's religious or somebody who's a statist or somebody who's superstitious or, you know, irrational or just about anyone, really, it's worth saying, okay, well, what are the rules?
How do we know who wins and who loses?
So if you're going to debate with somebody on religion, You can say, okay, well look, if you prove the existence of God, I will become a believer.
But if you fail to prove the existence of God, then you have to become an atheist.
Right? I mean, isn't that sort of important?
If you're going to sit down and insouciantly play some baccarat with James Bond, I think it's fairly important if James Bond says, okay, if you lose, I don't know.
I kind of believe I'm British.
I have no idea how to do a James Bond accent.
Well, there have been so many of them, so who knows, right?
Maybe I can do one of the vaguely Scottish brogue.
So Bond says, well, if you lose, then I get to keep your Volvo.
And then you say, oh, okay, well, that makes sense.
And if you lose, I get to keep your Aston Martin.
And Bond says, no, no, no, that's not how it works.
I can't lose. So it's like, okay, great.
So if I win, I get nothing.
But if I lose, I have to give up my Aston Martin.
And then, so if there's no stakes, it's not that important.
Somebody has to change their opinion as the result of the debate.
And they have to do it according to some, I would say, not entirely and consequentially objective criteria.
This is how science works, right?
I mean, I know it's true that science advances one grave at a time, insofar as you have to wait for the people from the old school to die off before you can get your own thing going, and the scientists get a new idea across.
It's not quite that bad, but science progresses because reason and evidence, the scientific method, establishes propositions as valid, as mathematics progresses that way as well, of course.
So, there has to be some stakes.
There'd be no point having scientific conferences or submitting papers if nobody ever changed their mind about anything.
It would be completely pointless, right?
Why would anyone bother?
It would just be a bunch of... Might as well be exchanging hieroglyphics with people who...
And none of you speak hieroglyphics.
It's like, well, that's pretty, I guess.
Let's write some more down and reassemble them and exchange them.
It's sort of pointless. So there has to be some stakes in the game.
And also, of course, there do have to be rules, right?
So if you're sitting down with...
And most debates are like this, right?
You sit down with James Bond to insouciantly play Baccarat on the French Verrier era.
And he sprays a whole bunch of cards your way called, like, I don't know, he sprays 20 cards your way.
And he says, we're playing Baccarat.
It's like, Baccarat?
Is that similar to Baccarat? No.
Okay, how do we play?
Well, we just pass cards back and forth, and eventually I call myself the winner.
And then you have to give me your Volvo.
Okay, I don't really think...
Bond, Mr. Bond, I must say, I don't think that that's quite the right approach to take, and I can't say that I'm really going to enjoy the game.
So there have to be objective rules, and if you're a gambling man, you're not just debating for the frenzy of it, which is fine too, but there have to be rules and there have to be stakes.
So if you're going to debate with somebody about gun control or stateless society or religion or universally preferable behavior, our definition of ethics that we work with, if you're going to do that, then you need to establish the rules, right?
You don't sort of get married to someone and say, hey, how should we raise our kids?
Right.
Do you go to church, by the way?
I really can't.
I don't know.
So you want to make sure that you are going to get the rules down and get the stakes.
So you can say, if you fail to prove, so you're putting forward a proposition there is a God.
And the other person is going to say, oh no, you're putting forward a proposition that there is no God and you have to prove that.
It's like, well, if there is no God, I can't prove there is no God.
If there is no God, you can't prove there is no God.
If there is a God and you prove there isn't a God, then you've just contradicted reality, so you will explode.
Actually, you will implode. To nothingness.
To the land where government programs work.
And religion makes you happy.
And capitalism fails.
Real capitalism, not the current mercantilist nonsense we have.
But you say, "Well, no, you're the one proposing that there's a God when there's no evidence of it, so you have to prove that God exists." And if you cannot prove that God exists, then you have to stop believing in God, right?
That's the stakes.
I don't play by any other stakes.
Why would I bother? Why would I just go through an intellectual exercise for funsies when I could spend my time writing an article or, I don't know, picking my nose or debating with somebody who actually wants to learn something about the truth rather than just go through the motions or go through a one-sided attempt to convince me of something.
And so if somebody says, yes, okay, if I fail to prove to you that there's a God, then I will cease to believe in God.
Fine, that's an excellent approach.
Then, of course, then you have to set up the rules, right?
Because if you say to a religious person, you have to stop believing in a Woden if you can't prove to me that there's a Woden or any other sort of God, then what's going to happen is when they logically fail to prove that there is a God, which they will, naturally, then...
What they're going to say is, but I know there's a God based on faith.
Ooh, faith! Oh, faith!
Ah, the bigotry of the spiritual world.
The rank prejudice of the unenlightened abstracts.
And that's, I mean, that's not the rules, right?
So if you say, well, here's chess, we're going to play for each other's car, and then the person says, like, you play chess according to rule, the rules of chess, right?
Yeah. And then you beat the other person.
You say, okay, great. Give me the keys to your car.
And that other person says, well, you didn't win.
And I said, yeah. You say, yeah, I just checkmated you.
And the other person says, well, that's not winning.
And you say, well, what do you mean it's not winning?
Here are the rules. And they say, no, no, no, no.
I have faith that I won.
Despite all evidence, despite everything that's written in the books and the chess world laws and so on, I have faith that I have won, so I'm not going to give you my car.
In fact, I still think that you should give me your car, because despite all of the rules and the objectivity and the testable hypothesis of checkmate and blah, blah, blah, I still have faith that I've won, so give me your car.
Well, what a complete waste of time that was, right?
Unless you're just playing to, I don't know, I can't even imagine what the point of that would be.
One second. So, you have to work out the rules.
And the rules are...
I mean, they're not that complicated.
We've gone over some of these in the Introduction to Logic series.
But the rules are not that complicated.
You say, okay, well, if there's no physical evidence, then at least the theory must have logical consistency.
Physical evidence trumps everything, just as it does in the scientific world.
In the absence of physical evidence, the first thing that is required is logical consistency in the theory.
Boom! That simple. Logical consistency in the theory.
Logical consistency does not mean tautological.
It doesn't mean you define Coke as it and then it turns out to be Coke and you claim that you've won an argument.
Logical consistency means all of the pieces fit together and correspond in a logical fashion to themselves and, most importantly, to reality.
So, that's the other thing that you need to establish, right?
So, you've got the stakes, you've got the rules, and the rules are evidence wins over everything.
Physical, tangible, material evidence wins over everything.
And then, in the absence of physical, tangible evidence, a theory must at least be logically consistent.
If they say, well, there's no physical evidence for God, it's like, okay, well...
Then God is sort of a math theory and you have to propose a definition of God that is not innately self-contradictory, which is completely impossible as we've gone over a number of times before.
And the wonderful thing is that when you get this kind of stuff going, then you can really get places with people.
You can really get some traction.
And by that, what I mean is people will stop debating with you.
I hate to say it, but it really is true.
People will just stop debating with you.
So, because for them, debating is just some emotionally retarded act-out fest of their abused childhoods or some such nonsense.
But it's not really about the pursuit of truth or the study of knowledge or the pursuit of wisdom or anything like that.
It's just a bunch of noise that they use to make themselves feel smart and to crush anybody else's intellectual aspirations and pleasure in ideas.
So, what will happen is you'll stop wasting time debating with people who are Not too bright, and you actually end up either debating with bright people and people with integrity and consistency and humility, or you'll just go back to reading books and great articles and debating with yourself until such time as you find better people to debate with.
FreeDomainRadio.com forward slash B-O-A-R-D. Some excellent, excellent debaters there.
Ooh-wee!
So, if you're going to debate something like, I don't know, gun control, right?
Somebody says, well, we have to get rid of guns because they keep crime down, right?
Then you say, okay, well, if I can prove to you that gun control does not keep crime down, will you reverse your position?
If I can prove to you that gun control does not keep crime down, but rather increases it, will you reverse your position?
And will you be against gun control?
Or, if they say, well, that's not enough of an evidence, then of course you can say, well, but you're saying to me that we need gun control to reduce crime.
Therefore, you're saying that the criteria by which we know gun control is good is that it reduces crime.
So, you can change your mind if you want, but then you can't lead off with gun control reduces crime.
Because if I can prove to you that gun control increases crime, Then you must reverse your position, right?
Because you're basing it on the fact that it reduces crime.
And then, of course, the person, if you can get the person to agree with that, great.
If you can't, then they're just mouthing a bunch of crap and they're kind of retarded and you shouldn't waste your time with them.
And I use the word kind of very loosely and no offense to genuinely retarded people.
But if the person says, yo, brother, let's go for it.
If you can prove to me that gun control results in increased crime, I will reverse my position.
Now, I'm not saying that I would debate at this level.
I would generally go for the anarcho-capitalist approach of defining morality in general.
But if they want to use the argument from effect, that's fine.
You say, okay, well, what's the definition of crime?
The definition of crime would include theft and murder and rape and this and that and the other, right?
And so you can say something like, okay, well, would you say that a group that steals almost half of everybody's income through the threat of force is committing a crime?
Because we've defined crime as theft, right?
And at some point, they're going to have to say yes to that, right?
Or they're going to have to stop debating with you.
And then you're going to say, okay, well, as gun control has increased, so have taxes.
Not that big a shock here, right?
As gun control, which is really defined as the disparity between the violence that the state can inflict on the citizens and the violence that the citizens can inflict on the state, right?
When that gets much wider, then lo and behold, you end up with a lot of taxes, right?
So gun control, in other words, a widening disparity between the force the government can use and the force that citizens can use, as that grows, then taxation grows.
So even if we Take out the sort of private criminals, quote private criminals in general, and there is evidence, strong evidence, that there are at least a million crimes prevented in the U.S. every year through gun control.
Sorry, through the ownership of guns.
But even if you don't want to start arguing about statistics with that sort of person and say, oh, those are just NRA statistics and you can't prove it and this and that, it's usually much more helpful to work from first principles.
Say, well, if a crime is theft and...
Given that the citizen cannot defend himself against the police or the military, and as a result, the amount of government power, government indebtedness, government theft and taxation and control, the throwing of people in prisons, the defining of harmless things like taking smoking marijuana as illegal, all of these things have vastly increased the amount of crime in society.
By the definition that crime is the forcible removal of property or the kidnapping and enslaving of somebody in a sort of private or prison context.
So then, it's taken only a few minutes, and of course, they're going to have some resistance.
They say, well, it's not taxes because it's voluntary.
It's like, oh, okay. Well, then I don't need to debate with you.
If it's voluntary, just meet me here next year and don't pay your taxes.
That's a debate I don't even bother having with people anymore.
If people are just so retarded, or propagandized is probably a better phrase.
Again, I don't mean to overuse the term.
They don't understand that taxation is coercion, then I just say, okay, well, don't pay your taxes, and we'll see you in a year or two, and we'll see how things are going for you.
And they generally say, well, I choose to pay my taxes.
Great. But it's still forced, right?
So that's a very, very quick way, which you can use to deal with arms control, right?
Or you may say...
Do you believe that we should control the government by raising an army to oppose the government?
So if the government is getting too big, do you think that citizens have the right to go in and start shooting people in the government or we can raise an army or deploy some weapon of mass destruction to destroy the government that is threatening us?
And mostly people are fairly uncomfortable with that kind of stuff, and it's certainly understandable as to why.
Oh my god, we've lost our light completely.
Let us not panic. There we go.
Just a little bit of orange on the forehead.
And people would generally say, well, no, I don't feel very comfortable with that.
I don't think that's a good idea.
Well, if we're not allowed to raise a gang to deal with a gang that is threatening us, if we're not allowed to raise a bigger gang to go and kill the gang that's threatening us, then I don't see how that works in terms of the government.
Because the government basically is put in place because people feel that there are criminal gangs that will threaten us, or that's the story that's sort of sold to the population.
Oh, without the government there are all these bad gangs, it'll turn into Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome and all this kind of nonsense.
But, really the government is just the raising of a huge gang to deal with a small gang.
So, if it's okay to raise a government gang to deal with a local gang of criminals, if it's okay to have a more powerful gang wipe out a less powerful gang, well, of course, the problem is infinite regression, right?
Because then the government becomes the big gang that totally threatens and undermines your property and freedom, and then, of course, you need an even bigger gang to deal with the government, and an even bigger gang to deal with that gang, and so on.
So, there's another example.
Gun control, which is...
The government's saying that you can't use certain weapons.
Well, why is it that the government gets to use those weapons?
If the principle is that the most powerful gang can tell everyone else which weapons to use, then, of course, the U.S., which has the most weapons of anyone, I think these days, can invade any country.
Oh, wait, no, it doesn't do that already.
No, it does those, except those that have nuclear weapons, of course.
Somehow Bush and company managed to find restraint in that area.
Diplomacy works when the other people are well armed.
That seems to be always the option that's pursued then.
Which, of course, only spreads the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the world.
One second, please. So there's lots of things that you can approach.
Oh, one more. Excuse me.
Hopefully that's not flacking up the webcam too much.
So that's a way that you can approach somebody who is very into gun control.
You can use the statistics, of course, about private crime.
You can use the statistics about taxation.
And you can use the statistics that if one gang can tell a less powerful gang which weapons to use, where does that conceivably stop?
Aren't you then stuck in the problem once more of infinite regression?
There's more about this on my blog.
I think I posted it on my blog about infinite regression.
So that's another example.
Or people say, well, you know, guns are just too dangerous, so kids will shoot each other and so on.
It's like, oh, well, do you know that more kids die from drowning in swimming pools than they do many, many times more kids die from drowning in swimming pools than from getting shot by guns?
So should we then get rid of all swimming pools?
And gun control, why should it really only...
Why are certain human beings exempt from gun control?
Right? So the government will prevent you from owning...
I don't know, a tank. But the government will use a tank to point it at your house, metaphorically speaking, but not that metaphorically.
So the government won't let you own a tank, but the government will point a tank at your house to get you to pay taxes so that it can order a tank for someone else.
So you can't have a tank and the government's going to roll a tank down your street if it's the only way it can get you to pay taxes.
And then it's going to point that tank gun at your house saying pay your taxes.
It's going to take that money and it's going to go and buy a tank for your neighbor who's in the military.
Do you see just how morally insane that is?
People are only really fans of gun control because they think that there's some moral category that's different from soldiers or police and so on, right?
Well, we've got to have a gang that outarms every other gang.
It's like, why? Because gangs are dangerous.
Well, giving a monopoly to one gang doesn't really seem to solve the problem of danger.
Right? Oh my god, there's a cold virus and a flu virus trying to take me down.
I'm going to shoot myself.
Well, I guess you've solved the problem, but not really.
So, I mean, there's lots of different ways that you can look at that.
But... The important thing to do is, again, when you're just sitting down and debate with someone, if somebody doesn't know the rules and won't conform to the stakes, right?
If somebody doesn't have any idea how to play chess and wants you to give up your car if you lose, right?
Everybody who debates with you wants you to change your mind.
Trust you. Trust me. I mean, I do.
I want you to change your mind, but just not with anything other than reason and evidence.
Everybody who wants to debate with you wants you to change your mind, so it's only fair to ask that in reciprocation so that there's less frustration.
How many times have you argued with someone, you go round and round in circles, and then you just break off in frustration because you're not getting anywhere?
Well, that's because you haven't defined the rules.
This is why marriages break up.
You haven't defined the rules, the ethics, the context.
So somebody who starts debating with you or who disagrees with something you're saying wants you to change your mind.
There's nothing wrong with that. It's perfectly healthy.
But they also have to be willing to change their mind should the evidence and reasoning go against them.
And so if somebody says, well, I just think this libertarian stuff is nonsense, you can say, well, I think that's very interesting.
I'm certainly happy to be corrected if I'm wrong.
The last thing I want to be is wrong.
So tell me by what reasoning you have deduced this claim.
What's the evidence and what's the logic that has worked for you to step you through this claim?
And if the person doesn't know, it's like, well, you know, I just think it's nonsense, or, well, libertarianism would just result in civil war, or the poor would starve in the streets, all this stuff.
Say, oh, okay, well, that's interesting.
What reason and evidence have you put together to support that claim?
And I guarantee you, it's just going to be a bunch of crap they picked up in the ecosystem or the intellectual stratosphere somewhere that means nothing that is just nonsense and garbage.
And if somebody is like that, if they put an opinion out there without any reasoning behind it, without any evidence behind it, without any real thought processes behind it, then just run away or walk away gracefully however you want to do it.
But for heaven's sake, don't debate with that person because it's just going to be a ridiculous and frustrating thing to do.
And so ask for reason and evidence.
Ask for the rules. Ask for under what criteria that person is going to change their mind because I say, yeah, I'll change my mind of reason and evidence.
Reason and evidence? Universal consistency?
Absolutely. I'm all over changing my mind.
What is your criteria for changing your mind?
And if they don't have one, for heaven's sake, do not debate with them because it's just going to be very bad for you and it's going to discredit philosophy as a whole.
▲
Export Selection