If that is true, and I seriously doubt that it is, then that is what's wrong with "ODN or pertty much anywhere serious debate is practiced", and the places where "serious debate is practiced" that it isn't true are the only places run by people who actually know what they're doing. That said, I realize how strong a statement that is, and will attempt to explain and justify it as best I can in a single post as we go along in this one...
But this is only the case because of the rule as it stands. It can't therefore be any justification for the rule itself. What the rule should enforce, instead of what you've just said above, is this modification to it:Originally Posted by Sigfried
"Certainly you can make that appeal, and absent any sensible objection, where the sensibility, the rationality of the objector in making the objection is demonstrated to exist, as opposed to being simply assumed to exist, it stands undefeated."
That is the change to the Challenge rule that literally, from an epistemological viewpoint, cries out to be done.
I do want someone to disagree with me, if they can (and how would I know that ahead of time?), but I want it to be a rational person, using a rational objection. You're taking the position there is no need to test objections for their rationality, that the simple fact they are propositions used to make an objection, instead of propositions used to make a claim, grants them some superior epistemological status, when the fact is taking such a position is nothing more or less than an endorsement of the Humean skepticism that has been philosophically debunked since almost the day he first published it.Originally Posted by Sigfried
And so long as the Challenge rule remains as it presently is on this board, this board will continue to award the unjustified objection a superior epistemological status to the unjustified claim that it does not merit in the bulk of the epistemological literature or according to common sense.
I never once refused to make my case, or used an unsupported claim to make it. The only unsupported propositions tendered in this thread came from those frustrated by the fact they couldn't mount a rational objection to the argument put forward; an extremely simple, inductive argument very similar to the one that goesOriginally Posted by Sigfried
1.) No crow has ever been observed to be other than a bird
2.) Therefore all crows are birds
Now it doesn't matter a fig that I didn't formalize it like that in the OP, and I didn't put it that way there, because I had two goals in designing this OP. The first, and most important was to drive home the point the human fetus is a human being. The second, and ancillary purpose was to highlight what's wrong with the Challenge rule. Despite the fact I gave an argument in my OP, (and have since repeated it when you first alluded to your belief I hadn't), and that those opposed to the conclusion of that argument were quick to offer counter arguments to it (ie., prospective "defeaters"), thus signaling their knee-jerk understanding they had some epistemological obligation to "defeat" it (thereby proving my point that the Challenge rule is critically deficient as it stands); when that began to fail, they all, you in particular, next appealed to the the cognitive environment the Challenge rule as written has created over the course of time, if not to a direct appeal to the rule itself.
Sig, if you can't see this situation as a bona fide "abuse" of the rule, and you're a senior staff member on this board, then you've simply proved my objection to the rule as written. It tends to stifle debate every bit as much as it tends to advance it. And this would be fine if there were no other, better alternative, but there so obviously is! Just follow the logic of defeat, starting with a grasp of the concept of defeat and defeaters that stands on all fours.
I've repeatedly told you, both here and via PM, what is not a matter of my opinion, supported or otherwise, but is a matter of fact: that it is a widely accepted truth within epistemology that there are such things as foundational beliefs, and therefore unsupportable propositions. It is also true that there are such things as self-evident propositions; propositions that once understood correctly, are simply seen to be true, that according to Descartes and Locke and a whole cadre of others, have a certain impact on the rational human mind such that their truth cannot be sensibly denied.Originally Posted by Sigfried
There are, therefore, propositions that not only have no need of evidential support to be true, and are seen to be true by all rational people of intelligence, but there are also propositions that are necessarily true if true at all, and therefore propositions for which no possible evidence can be offered, but also for which no rational objection can be made. An example of this last class of proposition would be the proposition that other minds, besides mine, exist, or that others feel pain similar to mine when they act similar to the way I do when I feel pain, or that I am not simply a brain in a vat, the subject of experimentation by an Alpha Centaurian epistemological scientist bent on determining the exact number of false beliefs its noetic structure will maintain without epistemic collapse.
Or take a less philosophically stale example: the English language. We hardly ever think about this, but the fact is there is no word in English that is not "defined" by appeal to another English word or words that are themselves undefined except by appeal to yet another round of English words, and this cognitive enterprise continues until we arrive back at the English word we were originally trying to "define". This, then, is an entirely circular cognitive procedure, taken by all English speakers in the hope, but clearly not the evidential demonstration, that because we all cognitively operate in very similar fashion, what we can all agree upon will overwhelm the logical flaw in our language, thus making it the case that contract supersedes circular epistemic flaw. But beyond this necessary accommodation, this agreed upon acceptance of the fatal logical flaw in language, has anyone ever provided evidential support that its inherent circularity is big enough to render that circularity logically acceptable, or even to render those epistemological theories that tolerate a certain amount of circularity in human cognition superior to those that don't? No. Could they do so if they were dedicated enough to put years into the project? No. We use the English language to communicate to other English speakers, then, not because it is not hopelessly logically flawed, but because we have made an epistemic "contract" with each other to do so.
Now enter the ODN Challenge rule of today. I can use it just the way it stands to challenge any word in English any member of ODN uses to make a claim, up to and including all of them as a stated proposition. I can even do it rationally, by simply referring to what I've just pictured for you above. What I can't do is "defeat" your claim by such an argument, because while I can lay out my effectively universal objection to anything ever claimed, based on the circularity of English to any and all penned propositions, and do so by appeal to a logic that can't be logically refuted, that argument lacks any potential to "defeat" even the weakest claim ever made. Indeed, would be laughed out of court. We all understand I can't defeat a claim in this manner, because in objecting to it in English I'm accepting the human cognitive contract that validates English, and thereby invalidates my defeater that it is too circular to hold logically. We all understand I can't first accept the contract to then use the contract to invalidate the contract, even if the contract is based on a a premise lacking any evidential support!
So we can see that the Challenge rule as it stands, because it wrongly focuses on the twin concepts of "propositions used as claims" and "propositions expressed as objections to claims", instead of what it should be focused upon, which is the concept of "defeat" for a claim, and by extension "defeaters", is wide open to abuse and misunderstanding. Furthermore, as it stands, the rule implicitly elevates the unsupported objection to a claim to an epistemological status it simply doesn't have according to the bulk of the epistemological literature, and, again, by logical extension, adopts the long discredited Human view of "reasonable" skepticism.
Finally, because of the glaring epistemological flaw in the Challenge rule as written today, it consequently grants to staff a wide ranging responsibility to make important judgments in very grey areas, and as in all such cases, thereby grants to the Staff unnecessary power, power that should reside in the text of the rule, but instead now resides in the minds of the staff members. The rule should be emended to reduce the burden of interpretation on the Staff, and place that burden instead on the text of the rule as written, a rule written to honor human cognition as it actually exists, instead of how it once existed in the mind of a famous 16th century philosopher, whose infamous principle of reasonable skepticism has long since been discredited.
The problem I see with debates about abortion is similar, but yet importantly different than the one Ibelsd has articulated elsewhere. According to him (and my apologies if I substantially misrepresent your view here, Ibelsd, but since this is an off topic off topic aside, I've presumed I can take the risk without offending), such debates either start off from a proposition held to be true as a matter of personal prejudice, or soon become such in the course of debate, and this is true regardless of the side taken. In this much we agree. Our difference resides in the fact Ibelsd believes this is inherent in the question itself, that it is therefore a necessary element of any such debate, and therefore cannot be avoided, and that because of this necessary and substantive subjectivity, it follows it makes no sense at all to debate the topic of abortion. On this point I strenuously disagree. I continue to believe with strong conviction that the anti-abortion on demand side of the question can be well supported by well established scientific and philosophical principles, while the pro-abortion on demand side of the question cannot,; by contrast must rely exclusively on ideological viewpoints that are not founded on well established science and philosophy, at best, and otherwise are supported by nothing more than rank personal prejudice.Originally Posted by Sigfried
Bookmarks