> Abortion is murder.
The opponent used Worst Argument in the World™. It’s super effective!
Or is it?
Okay, first of all, what is Worst Argument in the World? The idea originates from Scott Alexander’s
post on lesswrong. To quote the author himself:
> "X is in a category whose archetypal member gives us a certain emotional reaction. Therefore, we should apply that emotional reaction to X, even though it is not a central category member."
In this case, X is abortion and the said category is ‘murder’. The category ‘murder’ clearly gives us a negative emotional reaction. Hence, by association, we will apply the same reaction to abortion, even though when we think of murder, we imagine a reckless psychopath slashing his knife in the blood lust, or something equally heinous.
What a nice rhetorical trick, innit?
Well, let us apply the principle of charity to it first.
Take a pro-lifer, who honestly believes that the foetus has a right to life, not qualitatively distinct from that of an adult human. She’s not playing a game in rhetorics, she expresses her strong belief. She needn’t advocate total ban in the case where mother’s life is endangered, say, she is against abortion on demand. And the conviction that it should be illegal comes from her inner judgment, that abortion in fact is murder. So, her argument is as follows:
Premise. Abortion is murder.
Conclusion. Abortion is wrong.
And we can construct a range of parallel arguments just like that:
Pr. Homosexuality is not normal.
C. Homosexuality is wrong.
Or:
Pr. Taxation is theft.
C. Taxation is wrong.
Pr. There’s a difference in intelligence between races.
C. That’s why Japan won with Senegal at the World Cup 2018.
And so on.
Scott claims using a premise of that type in an argument is literally the worst thing you can do. And others get pretty, pretty, pretty incited about those too. They rush to use such counter arguments as follows:
> So, when you ejaculate in a tissue, that’s a genocide.
> It is normal. Gosh, my country is so homophobic.
> No, it’s not, kucu.
> Well, that’s racist.
What is common to all those replies is that they attack the premise of the argument. And there are two grave mistakes in that.
First, an implication is false if and only if the antecedent is true and the consequent is false. Given “if X, then Y”, you assume X and see if Y follows. It doesn’t? Well then, the implication is false. It does? It’s true, you’re good. What you do not is claim “but X is false”. To give an example:
E. If Donald Trump is a reptilian, he should be impeached.
To claim he is not does not tell us anything about whether he should be impeached or not. On the other hand, if you assumed that he was a reptilian indeed, but he should not be impeached even in the face of it, well then, you’ve got your answer. The argument is false.
With that in mind, assume that all those premises in the arguments listed are true. I can myself sign under any of them. The thing is, in no way does any actually make the argument valid.
1. Abortion is murder.
2. Meat is murder.
3. Eating meat is okay, wouldn’t you say. [One hardly ever meets someone who claims both abortion and meat are murder, it’s more of a xor thing at most.]
4. So, it doesn’t seem that murder actually is wrong just-like-that.
5. So, we haven’t learnt anything about the moral status of abortion.
What we do is attack the ridiculous inference that’s pushed, instead of battling with premises which actually are, or very well may be true. Another example:
1. Homosexuality is not normal.
2. Normal meaning typical, well, neither is being fabulous.
3. And being fabulous certainly is fine.
Or:
1. There are differences in intelligence between races.
2. There are so many more important factors to soccer than the coach’s intelligence. Do you even know what an offside is?
Don’t go after the premise. Go after the hidden inference.
The opponent used Worst Argument in the World™. It’s super effective!
Or is it?
Okay, first of all, what is Worst Argument in the World? The idea originates from Scott Alexander’s
post on lesswrong. To quote the author himself:
> "X is in a category whose archetypal member gives us a certain emotional reaction. Therefore, we should apply that emotional reaction to X, even though it is not a central category member."
In this case, X is abortion and the said category is ‘murder’. The category ‘murder’ clearly gives us a negative emotional reaction. Hence, by association, we will apply the same reaction to abortion, even though when we think of murder, we imagine a reckless psychopath slashing his knife in the blood lust, or something equally heinous.
What a nice rhetorical trick, innit?
Well, let us apply the principle of charity to it first.
Take a pro-lifer, who honestly believes that the foetus has a right to life, not qualitatively distinct from that of an adult human. She’s not playing a game in rhetorics, she expresses her strong belief. She needn’t advocate total ban in the case where mother’s life is endangered, say, she is against abortion on demand. And the conviction that it should be illegal comes from her inner judgment, that abortion in fact is murder. So, her argument is as follows:
Premise. Abortion is murder.
Conclusion. Abortion is wrong.
And we can construct a range of parallel arguments just like that:
Pr. Homosexuality is not normal.
C. Homosexuality is wrong.
Or:
Pr. Taxation is theft.
C. Taxation is wrong.
Pr. There’s a difference in intelligence between races.
C. That’s why Japan won with Senegal at the World Cup 2018.
And so on.
Scott claims using a premise of that type in an argument is literally the worst thing you can do. And others get pretty, pretty, pretty incited about those too. They rush to use such counter arguments as follows:
> So, when you ejaculate in a tissue, that’s a genocide.
> It is normal. Gosh, my country is so homophobic.
> No, it’s not, kucu.
> Well, that’s racist.
What is common to all those replies is that they attack the premise of the argument. And there are two grave mistakes in that.
First, an implication is false if and only if the antecedent is true and the consequent is false. Given “if X, then Y”, you assume X and see if Y follows. It doesn’t? Well then, the implication is false. It does? It’s true, you’re good. What you do not is claim “but X is false”. To give an example:
E. If Donald Trump is a reptilian, he should be impeached.
To claim he is not does not tell us anything about whether he should be impeached or not. On the other hand, if you assumed that he was a reptilian indeed, but he should not be impeached even in the face of it, well then, you’ve got your answer. The argument is false.
With that in mind, assume that all those premises in the arguments listed are true. I can myself sign under any of them. The thing is, in no way does any actually make the argument valid.
1. Abortion is murder.
2. Meat is murder.
3. Eating meat is okay, wouldn’t you say. [One hardly ever meets someone who claims both abortion and meat are murder, it’s more of a xor thing at most.]
4. So, it doesn’t seem that murder actually is wrong just-like-that.
5. So, we haven’t learnt anything about the moral status of abortion.
What we do is attack the ridiculous inference that’s pushed, instead of battling with premises which actually are, or very well may be true. Another example:
1. Homosexuality is not normal.
2. Normal meaning typical, well, neither is being fabulous.
3. And being fabulous certainly is fine.
Or:
1. There are differences in intelligence between races.
2. There are so many more important factors to soccer than the coach’s intelligence. Do you even know what an offside is?
Don’t go after the premise. Go after the hidden inference.
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